Victoire Weasley and the Thief of Souls
by Anthony J
Summary: After six calm years at Hogwarts, Victoire Weasley is ready to finish her education. But if NEWT-level studies and advanced electives sounded difficult, then unraveling an unimaginable Dark plot will take everything she has. Rated M for events to come.
1. Departure

With half-an-hour left until departure, the crowd was stifling.

Students, parents, and siblings jostled their way through the station, hauling trunks and cages, and trying not to get crushed. More than a few stray animals roamed freely across the platform, dodging between the feet of wizards to avoid getting trampled.

Three new cars had been added to the train this year, with additional compartments bewitched into each. Victoire finished checking through the last them, smothering a smile as she broke up a pair of amorous fourth-years, and stepped off the train back onto the platform. The _Hogwarts Express _had been idling at Platform 9¾ since eight o'clock that morning; she had arrived shortly before nine-thirty to get a headstart on her duties. New arrivals continued to trickle through the gate even now, and as she watched, three more people appeared on the platform by Apparition.

The mother, father, and young son popped silently into being near the column to Victoire's left, and she instantly recognized that brazen blonde hair. Draco Malfoy wore a black coat buttoned to the collar; his wife – Victoire couldn't remember her name, but felt sure it had something to do with music – was dressed a bit more casually, but with the same air of careful calculation. Their son had already donned his school robes, and from the look on his face, it had almost certainly not been his idea.

_Scorpius_, Victoire remember with a grin. _Scorpius Ambrose Malfoy_. Not a name that was easily forgotten, especially considering he'd been born on the same day as her cousin Albus, two doors down the hall and fifty-seven minutes later. Victoire's grin spread into a full smile as she thought of her cousin, who would also be starting his first year later this evening. _Albus Severus Potter_. Another name not easily forgotten. Uncle Harry had certainly turned the pressure up on that one. As she thought of it, Victoire realized that those first few years after the War ended had produced some eccentrically-named children, herself included. She imagined naming her own children something more traditional. John, perhaps; or Robert, and Rachel for her daughter.

The elder Malfoy was kneeling in front of his son and speaking, and Victoire found herself fascinated by the notion of Draco Malfoy dispensing fatherly advice. That wasn't really fair, she knew; her entire conception of the man had been based for so long on the opinions of others. He uncle Ron was the loudest and most negative, but none of the Weasleys really had anything nice to say about the Malfoy family. Uncle Harry at least tried to be objective, but more often than not he preferred to avoid the subject entirely.

And then there was the issue of the _Daily Prophet_ that ran in early May of each year, including its regular editorial criticizing the exoneration of the Malfoys. Aunt Hermione had cautioned Victoire to take that particular publication with a few grains of salt.

She wandered the platform as she mentally organized her schedule for the rest of the day. Rosalind Archer and Stephen Holmes would hold a meeting of the prefects in about an hour, but they'd mostly just rehash what Peter Cunningham had told them all last year. She dispersed a knot of rough-housing teenagers who hurriedly rushed aboard the train, undoubtedly to hex each in the privacy of their own compartment.

She took in the commotion of the station. Observation was a habit she had picked up during the countless gatherings of her vast family, and it had served her well as a prefect.

She saw a father wearily hauling a trunk and owl-cage despite the objections of his daughter, who tearfully outlined all the reasons why she shouldn't go away to school. A mother nearby hastily resorted to a _tergeo _charm to remove some smear from the face of her son, who was less interested in his own hygiene than in chasing after a pygmy-puff.

A lanky girl with a green-and-silver scarf around her waist conjured a handful of bluebell flames to the amazement of her friends. A tall boy with slicked black hair and a Chudley Cannons t-shirt passed her, a Valkyrie racing broom slung over one shoulder, and in his wake Victoire spotted a small cat with a distinct burgundy pelt. The cat cast furtive glances around the crowd before its heterochromatic gaze fell upon Victoire.

One of its eyes was a rich lilac, while the other was a pale cobalt. The cat regarded her briefly, then padded off down the Platform. A moment later, the brick face of the gate shimmered briefly, and Victoire saw Professor Diggory step onto the platform. Her dark hair hung loose and halfway down her back, but she would have it wound up into her signature chignon before the train reached Hogsmeade. The professor was a neighbor of her grandparents in Ottery St. Catchpole, and Victoire had started through the crowd toward her when she heard a faint crack behind her.

Her first thought was that the unruly duelers had spilled back onto the platform. She didn't make it to a second thought, because before she could even turn about, an arm shot around her waist, and everything went black. Her mind clenched in a moment that seemed to stretch out to infinity in all directions as her body felt like it was imploding. She sensed that infinite tightening, like she might fold up into a single point in space and time, and pondered what fantastic new universes would issue from such a phenomenon.

Then she was standing in a pergola overlooking a winding brook edged by majestic willows. The stillness was stunning. She recognized the place instantly; it was where she'd kissed Teddy Lupin for the first time, just two years ago. She had startled him so thoroughly that his hair had flashed from iridescent fuchsia back to a neutral brown.

Now Victoire wheeled on the spot and gave Ted a curt slap across the shoulder.

"Bet you think you're funny, huh?" The smile tugging at the corners of her mouth completely undermined the severity of her tone. Ted at least did her the courtesy of pretending the swipe had hurt, rubbing at his arm and groaning through gritted teeth.

Except, Victoire knew that when Ted was really injured, he gave no indication at all. So this playful little ruse just came across as patronizing, and for that she gave him an extra shove square in the chest, knocking him back a step. That accomplished nothing more than to start him laughing, and then the giddy sound of his amusement got her laughing, and of course that swiftly dismantled the entire pretense of the argument.

Ted recovered his ground and reached for her waist. She folded her arms over he chest, but didn't stop him from lacing his fingers together behind her back. She set her face again and gave severity another try. "I could have been in the middle of something."

His grin would not be diminished. "You weren't."

"Ah, right," she said. "Stealth and Tracking." This time, the seriousness fell away for good, replaced by her delicate smile. "Hazard of dating an Auror." She unfolded her arms and slid her hands under his arms to hold onto his sides. "So who were you today? The thirteen-year-old flinging Blinking Jinxes? The kid in the Cannons t-shirt?"

She thought a moment, looked at him skeptically. "The burgundy cat?"

"Trade secrets, dear," he laughed, arching an eyebrow theatrically at her.

She sighed through her grin. "Of course."

Ted flashed his most striking smile then. He didn't even know it, though, because his most striking smile was the one he never used on purpose. It only emerged when he was at his most comfortable and unassuming; when he was completely at peace with the state of the world, even if the world consisted of nothing more than a pergola overlooking a winding brook; when he was entirely content within the confines of his own skin.

Victoire liked knowing that her presence gave him such peace and contentment. She leaned back in his arms as he moved toward her, making him chase her, knowing that the chase was half the fun and enjoying it herself. When she couldn't outrun him anymore, she relented and let him close the distance between them. His reward for persevering.

Of course, it was as much her reward for making it worth the effort. She savored his intoxicating fragrance, that heady mix of shampoo and detergent and pheromones, as his lips brushed against hers once, twice, again, more. His hands roamed the contours of her back, and even in this hidden sanctuary, he kept north of her waist. She could feel herself smiling against his mouth, but that was alright, because he was smiling against hers.

A dry rustling drifted through the pergola. Victoire saw Ted open his eyes and glance across the brook, and she pulled back to follow his gaze. Across the water she spotted a shaggy chestnut Aethonan nudging through the foliage along the far bank, stripping the leaves from a drooping willow branch. The horse's massive wings were folded back against its body, and it looked up to eye the teenagers as it chewed.

Then it ruffled its wings and dipped its head to the stream to drink. Ted laughed softly, and Victoire turned back to him, leaned forward to peck his lower lip. "Alright," she said, licking her own bottom lip. "Enough of that."

"Never," Ted disagreed, but made no move to pick up where they'd left off. His hands rested on her hips as she perched her elbows on his shoulders, picking at the back of his hair with her fingernails. It was back to its natural brown again, and the sunlight rifling through it turned it the color of umber.

"I have to get back to King's Cross," Victoire told him. "The train leaves at eleven."

Ted's eyes glittered. "D'you think I could Apparate onto a moving train?"

She shook her head with a grin. "I think you'd splinch yourself across half the English countryside." She watched his amber eyes, then asked, "Then what would I do?"

Ted glanced away, over her head, and sighed. "I guess you could seduce that Bardsley chap." A breeze swept across the water then and fluttered her hair, which caught the light from a million brilliant angles. He broke into a grin as he tucked an errant strand behind her ear. "I hear he already fancies you."

"You know, I could," she said, pretending to consider the matter earnestly. "His mother sits on the International Confederation of Wizards, and his father is the Healer-in-Charge of Spell Damage at St. Mungo's." She nodded, flashed half-a-grin; "they're quite respected. I hear Mr. Bardsley is friends with the Minister from their Hogwarts days."

Ted cocked an eyebrow at her. "Is that what you hear?"

"Rumors, you know," she dismissed. "Warren likes to brag."

He nodded with a laugh. "That's wh—"

She didn't give him a chance to tell her what that was, because turnabout was fair play. He was still holding her waist; she tightened her grip on his shoulders, twirled sharply there in his arms, taking him with her as she punched a hole through space and doubled back the way they came. The intense pressure did not blindside her this time.

They emerged onto the platform again. Ted sucked in a sudden breath and coughed once, having been caught in the middle of a word. Then he saw where they were, tucked away in the corner of two brick walls of a train station, and he laughed. He moved in again and found Victoire's top lip with both of his; she leaned into the kiss as the noise of the crowd and the train churned around them. They were blissfully oblivious to it all.

"Hey!" Victoire heard a familiar voice cut through the discord from startlingly close by. She opened her eyes and tilted her head, and found her cousin James just a few feet away with his arms folded accusatorily over his chest. "What are you doing back here?"

Victoire thought it rather obvious what she and Ted were doing. She stifled a laugh as he turned to James with an arched eyebrow. "You don't really need me to explain the mechanics of what's going on here, do you?"

James opened his mouth to retort, then seemed to realize he had nothing substantial to say, and settled for an indignant glare instead. Ted flashed him a flippant grin, hoping perhaps for some degree of male solidarity; all he got was James's protective disapproval.

Ted sighed, but never lost the hint of a smirk when he told James, "I just popped by to see her off, wish her luck." Then a tiny sneer crept into his voice as he said, "so what say you make like Percy Fawcett and get lost."

James glared at Ted for a couple of extra seconds, then turned pointedly to Victoire. "Mum told me to tell you she still hasn't found the pendant, but she's not giving up. Said it probably got misplaced in the move." His shoulders slumped with fatigue. "She's half obsessed. If she doesn't find it soon, she's threatened to start recruiting fresh eyes."

Victoire hadn't thought of that pendant in weeks. It wasn't a particularly costly piece of jewelry: just a polished stone of copal the size of a Galleon, strung from a thin brass chain. She'd become fascinated with it as a child when her Aunt Ginny had worn it to her Uncle George's wedding, and Victoire had spent most of the reception watching the stone as her aunt talked about the distant relative she'd inherited it from. The longer Victoire had looked into the glossy amber, the more it had seemed to swirl lazily like liquid gold.

So for Victoire's seventeenth birthday this past May, her aunt had promised her the pendant just as soon as she dug it out of the rubble of the Potter Family's latest move. Except that the pendant had proven itself notoriously elusive, and despite Aunt Ginny's apparently ceaseless efforts, it had yet to turn up. Victoire certainly hadn't pestered her aunt about it. As far as she could remember, she had only mentioned it once, in passing and half-jokingly, at Uncle Harry's surprise birthday part a month back.

Now it sounded rather like it had become a personal quest for James's mother.

"Tell her not to go crazy looking for it," Victoire said, aware that would probably be as effective as telling a dragon not to breathe fire. "It's not a matter of life and death."

"Won't work." James shook his head; "she's already set on it." He shrugged at the inevitability of his mother's single-mindedness, then glanced across the concourse. "I've got to get back. Al's starting this year, and someone's got to make sure he doesn't get run down by a rogue trolley." He delivered his most put-upon sigh, shot Ted another hard look, then merged back into the crowd.

Victoire turned back to Ted. "Percy Fawcett? Really?"

"Too obscure?" he asked, grinning at his own wit.

"Binns doesn't get into the 20th Century until seventh-year."

"Ah, right," Ted nodded, looking wistful. "Some of the best naps of my youth."

A moment later, his reminiscence was cut short by the sharp tenor of the _Express_'s whistle. The shifting of the crowd quickened; Ted leaned in and pressed another kiss to Victoire's upper lip. "That's my cue," he told her, letting go of her waist. "The Ministry waits for no man; important Auror business to conduct; ne'er-do-wells to apprehend, justice to be served. That sort of thing. Sure you understand."

"Go then," Victoire interrupted with a laugh, breaking him off before he could build up a full head of steam. "Keep the world safe for wizardkind."

He took a step back, and tipped her a wink. Then he twitched in his place, and was gone.

Victoire laughed again and shook her head as she joined the tide of students crossing the platform. She helped a short queue of first-years onto the train, then climbed aboard herself and headed down the narrow corridor. The train began to move.


	2. Compartment R

Victoire made her way to compartment 'R' as the houses of London swept by.

She had stowed her trunk in the overhead luggage rack upon arriving at the station. Tybalt had promptly curled up on the seat next the window. Now as she returned, she pulled the door open to find the compartment occupied by five people, two owls, a strix, a ferret, and a dark green snake as long as her arm. Tybalt hadn't moved.

Nearest the door, to her left, Hecate Fleming studied her reflection in the mirror of a handheld compact. Her dark hair was hastily wound up and pinned in place with what looked like a Hippogriff feather. She daubed a fingertip's worth of a clear potion under each eye, smoothing it over her cheeks, examining her handiwork in the compact. When she was satisfied with her appearance, she smiled coyly at herself and asked, "mirror, mirror, window pane; who's the fairest on this train?"

A rough cockney voice answered from the glass, "that tasty little bird over there with the delicious pixie-cut and the phenomenal ra—"

Hecate snapped the compact shut with a huff. Said bird with said pixie-cut laughed out loud, looking over her issue of _Seekers Weekly_. "Hey; that thing actually works," she said as Hecate stuffed the compact into the bag at her feet. Victoire spotted the stylized triple-W logo on the back of the compact, and wondered why Hecate thought she could get a sincere opinion from a Weasley Wheeze. She must have believed it to be a genuine article, but Victoire knew that her cousin Hugo was annoyingly fond of sneaking prank products into the WonderWitch displays. Their Uncle George had done nothing to discourage the habit.

"Shut up, Fidelma," Hecate told her. Fidelma Thackery laughed again instead. She was laid out across the seat on her back with her feet on the floor, and she swung one leg at Hecate, catching her lightly on the hip. Hecate spun quickly to Victoire, pointing an accusatory finger at Fidelma. "Prefect! Bodily abuse! Dock her points!"

"She's in your House," Victoire reminded her, "and the term hasn't even started yet."

"The train counts!" Hecate demanded. Her claim was undercut by her laughter.

"Quit being such a baby," Fidelma told Hecate with another laugh. She propped her magazine in front of her face and laid her head back against the leg of the boy beside her. He stared out the window, apparently consumed by his ruminations. His black hair took on a sheen in the sunlight. His Cannons t-shirt proclaimed the club's newest motto: "Bringing the Cup Back to Chudley: Stranger Things Have Happened." The handle of a Valkyrie broom was jutting out of the overhead luggage rack above him.

She knew that he was a fellow seventh-year with whom she had shared a handful of classes over the last half-dozen years. He wasn't a Ravenclaw; Slytherin was her best guess, but she was embarrassed that she couldn't recall his name at the moment. A snatch of poetry occurred to her – _the egregious wizard shall foredoom the fate of_ something – but it scattered when Fidelma dropped her magazine. "He's been snoring again."

Victoire grinned and stepped into the compartment, passing the boy and girl sitting across from Fleming and Thackery. Brendon Flynn was attempting to demonstrate the fine subtleties of Ophidian pronunciation to Desdemona Zabini. Flynn's long wiry hair was tied back now, as it was most of the time, because he insisted that charming it otherwise was a spectacular waste of magic. A slender serpent wound itself up his arm and across his shoulder, apparently correcting his articulation.

Desdemona was all but entranced by his flowing, whispery inflections. Victoire could see how Flynn had earned a reputation as something of a heartthrob. He had taken it upon himself lately to demystify the Ophidian language – which he flatly refused to call "Parseltongue" – in an effort disprove the notion that Parselmouths were all Dark Wizards-in-training. So he was determined to teach someone else how to talk to snakes.

As she reached the window, she could hear the jagged rumble of Tybalt's snoring under the clatter of the train. She crouched next to the bench, watched Tybalt's whiskers twitch as he breathed heavily in his sleep, and wondered briefly what cats dreamt about. Then she bent close and blew in his face. The cat recoiled from the gust, ears flicking as he slowly opened his eyes and yawned. Victoire smirked as Tybalt shot her a short look of disdain before turning toward the seatback and propping his chin on his paws.

She petted his side in consolation, and felt him purring as he drifted noiselessly back to sleep. As Desdemona endeavored to enunciate an Ophidian phrase, Victoire crossed back to the door. "Try not to kick anyone while I'm gone," she implored Fidelma.

"I promise nothing," Thackery answered cheerily without looking up.

Victoire pulled the door open with a grin. "See you kids in an hour."

"Yeah, right," Hecate scoffed. "If Rosalind can manage to keep Stephen in check."

Fidelma laughed skeptically. Victoire guessed they were likely correct, but didn't say so. She left compartment 'R' and started down the corridor toward the locomotive.

She passed a door and saw her cousins Albus and Rose among a half-dozen eleven-year-olds, both relaxed and enjoying the company and the ride. Two cars later she passed another door where she spotted James again, waving a many-folded sheaf of parchment in the midst of a group of his fellow fourth-years. His look of conspiratorial glee piqued Victoire's suspicion, but she had no time for a detour just now. She made a mental note as she continued on.

She made her way to the prefect carriage near the front of the train, where she joined the other two dozen teenagers in a compartment spelled to accommodate them all. She spotted her cousin standing across the room with Woodrow Twycross. Victoire threw the pair of fifth-years a wave that Isolde returned in kind, craning her arm to be seen over the crowd. As her cousin turned back to Twycross, Victoire saw him settle his hand on her hip. Isolde didn't move from his touch, and leaned closer as he spoke into her ear.

Warren Bardsley sat beside a window in a far corner, and nodded to Victoire as she headed to him. She didn't bother to sit as she asked, "How was your summer?"

"Bloody terrible," he deadpanned, but did not elaborate. As the last two people entered the compartment, conversation died. They both wore their school robes; the boy sported a green and silver tie in a full Windsor knot, while the girl's black and yellow tie hung loose in a swift four-in-the-hand. The two looked over the assembled students, counted out the full complement of prefects in attendance, and commenced the meeting.

"Alright," Rosalind said. "Let's get this over with."

Stephen cut her a fleeting look, then turned back to the group. "First off, we'd like to welcome everyone back, and to offer our congratulations to this year's fifth-year students on their appointments." He tried to lead a round of applause that went flat as most of the upperclassmen contributed only half-heartedly. Satisfied with his introduction, Holmes spent the next half-hour on a largely pointless exercise in which all twenty-four prefects introduced themselves by name, House, hometown, and some detail unique to themselves.

Victoire tried not to let her mind wander. She learned that Estrid Hough was ambidextrous, and that the girl lived in Westingfield along the western coast of Ireland.

Once everyone was acquainted, Stephen launched into a speech that Victoire guessed he'd spent half the summer preparing. He extolled the collection of prefects as an elite cross-section of the best that Hogwarts had to offer, and expressed his pride at being chosen with Rosalind to oversee such a capable group. He pointed out that they had been assigned to represent their school; that they were being trusted with a great measure of authority; that they were being given a chance to prove themselves exceptional.

As he enumerated the many rights and responsibilities conferred by the position, Victoire had to admit that Stephen Holmes was surprisingly effective at appealing to one's dignity. He made the job of patrolling the halls after hours sound nearly epic, a duty fraught with peril and wild adventure. And as he continued to rhapsodize about the opportunity to participate in an institution greater than any of them, she also realized that Fidelma and Hecate had been right.

She stood no chance of getting out of this in under an hour.

"Finally," he said at last, and half the room perked up at that; "I just want to remind everyone to be responsible when docking points. The moment you take them, the hour-glasses reflect the adjustment."

"A consensus of the four Heads of House is required to overturn a deduction," Rosalind cautioned. "And your House will be charged the points for abuse of authority."

"Moreover," Stephen added, and Rosalind rolled her eyes beside him; "one reversal undermines the authority of every prefect, and damages the reputation of the post. Being prudent benefits us now, and benefits those who follow us in years to come." He let that sink in, as much as anything could sink in with two dozen disinterested teenagers.

Then he added, "Any questions?"

No one spoke at first. Then a fifth-year Hufflepuff, who'd introduced himself as Michael Sturgis from Little Whinging, asked when an infraction might warrant a detention over a deduction, and Stephen was off again. He took four minutes to deliver an explanation that amounted to little more than _use your best judgment_. It took another twenty minutes to resolve all of the varied and convoluted scenarios that some of the younger prefects envisioned. Victoire, for one, found an Inferi invasion of the campus to be remarkably unlikely.

Two o'clock had come and gone by the time Stephen finally, mercifully, adjourned the meeting with the passionate announcement: "Let's make this a fantastic year."

Rosalind was first out of the door. The rest of the prefects dispersed in short order, and by the time Victoire and Warren made for the door, the compartment had returned to its usual dimensions. Warren accompanied Victoire back to compartment 'R'; they stopped once when a flash of blue light hit a window as they passed, and Warren threw the door open to reproach the cluster of rowdy teenagers. Victoire felt sure she recognized them from King's Cross, but said nothing as she and Warren continued down the corridor.

They parted ways at compartment 'R'. Warren headed further along the train to rejoin the rest of the Ravenclaw seventh-year boys. Victoire returned to her compartment, and dropped onto the bench between Brendon and Tybalt with a deep sigh.

"Told you," Hecate said. She sounded more sympathetic than smug.

"Here," Desdemona said, digging into her bag. She came up with a handful of small pentagonal boxes, which she passed around Brendon to Victoire. "We figured you could use the sugar after an hour with Stephen the Long-Winded."

"Too right," Victoire agreed. She tore open a box, grabbed the frog inside before it could even twitch, and gnawed its tasty little chocolate head right off. The frog wasted its one decent hop on a crooked tumbling lurch, thumping against the window and dropping to the seat next to Tybalt. The cat sniffed at the bewitched delicacy as the frog twisted about, trying to look around with the head it no longer had. Then it reached with its forelegs to the bitemarks along its severed neck, discovered itself headless, and beat a tiny chocolate fist against the bench in frustrated resignation.

All six teenagers were doubled over laughing by the time the Chocolate Frog gave up its quest for freedom and accepted its fate as a snack. Before discarding the package, Victoire shook out the Famous Wizard Card, and broke out laughing again when she found her own Uncle Harry grinning up at her with those circular eyeglasses and that legendary scar. She flipped the card over to read the bio, even though she knew it off by heart:

_ Harry Potter survived an assassination attempt as an infant._

_ He later found the Philosopher's Stone, drew the Sword of_

_ Gryffindor from the Sorting Hat, destroyed Salazar Slytherin's_

_ Basilisk, won the Triwizard Tournament, reunited the Deathly_

_ Hallows, and defeated the Wizard-Who-Can-Now-Be-Named-_

_ Though-We'd-Really-Rather-Not._

_ Then he graduated from Hogwarts._

Victoire flicked the card across the compartment, landing it in Fidelma's lap. "Still keeping those?" she asked as she scooped up the docile remains of the frog.

Thackery lifted her magazine, snapped up the card. "I'm looking for Romulus and Brigid…" she said, flipping the card over to look at the photograph. "Ugh, Potter," she whined; "I've got a trunk full of these. Although…ten of them and a Knut buys a Sugar Quill at Honeydukes." She tucked the card into her magazine, though; "he's so overrated."

Victoire shot a look across the car, and saw Fidelma grinning sarcastically.


	3. The Oldest Hat in Albion

Night had fully settled over Scotland by the time the train pulled into Hogsmeade Station.

Victoire emptied out of the compartment as the train slowed to a jerky crawl, heading up the corridor with Tybalt padding blearily at her heel. Her fellow seventh-years had already made for the nearest exits, all eager to avoid the confused rush of first-years. Victoire directed traffic from the forward door of the carriage, reminding several younger students to leave their trunks on the train as they hurried off onto the platform.

When the last student exited the carriage, Victoire pulled the forward door closed and tapped the handle with her wand as she thought _Colloportus_. The latch clicked, and she grinned to herself at the fantastic usefulness of nonverbal incantations; she headed back down the train, stepping into each compartment to ensure that it was empty. She searched each seemingly-empty room with a _Homenum Revelio_, recalling a dreadful anecdote of her Uncle Harry's that her Uncle Ron found inexplicably hysterical.

After ensuring each room was, in fact, vacant, Victoire closed and locked the door behind her. As she secured the last compartment in the carriage, she caught sight of the luggage Vanishing from the overhead luggage compartments. The rubbish littering the benches and floor, on the other hand, was left behind for the train's crew. Victoire shook her head.

She climbed off the train. Tybalt followed closely, a scavenged Cockroach Cluster squirming between his jaws. He bit down on it with a hearty crunch as they crossed the platform and caught up with one of the last of the horseless stagecoaches still standing in the lane. The pair climbed into the cart with Desdemona, Hecate and Fidelma, and were hardly settled before the self-drawn carriage began rolling up the path toward the Castle.

They reached the school in short order and piled out of the cart, reeling in stragglers and herding students toward the stone steps and through the broad oak front doors. The four of them quickly gave in to the tide and filed in through the Entrance Hall, passing by the packed Receiving Room. Victoire spotted Deputy-Headmaster Burbage, who had corralled the newest collection of first-years and was explaining the Sorting process to them.

"We were never that small, were we?" Hecate asked with a grin.

Fidelma glanced over the crowd at the assortment of uneasy eleven-year-olds. "I wasn't. Don't know about you lot." She turned to look at Desdemona, flickering her eyes down, since Zabini was a full foot shorter. "`Mona here looks like she still is."

Desdemona flashed a hard look, and shoved against Fidelma's back to hasten the taller girl's steps. "I'm not a bloody Van Gogh painting, you lazy prat!"

Fidelma spun quickly to Victoire, pointing an accusatory finger at Desdemona and laughing so hard so almost couldn't say, "Prefect! Bodily abuse! Dock her points!"

"Belt up, the both of you!" Victoire barked over the noise, just as they had spilled into the Great Hall. The four House tables filled out the span of the immense room, and yet were still longer this year than Victoire could ever remember. Hundreds of teenagers swarmed the aisles, catching up with friends and clambering along the length of the tables.

Victoire spotted Warren at the end of the Ravenclaw table nearest the Entrance Hall, conversing animatedly with Brendon and their dorm mates Allen McLaggen and Kieron Aspinwall. The girls elbowed their way through the crowd to their table, filling in what few empty seats remained, and Victoire caught half of McLaggen's sentence that ended, "—to trust a bloke who can talk to snakes!"

"I keep trying to tell him," Fidelma insisted, jostling a fifth-year out of the way in order to sit at Victoire's left. "But does he listen? No. Because he's…" but what she intended to say about him then dissolved into a short stream of snapped hisses that made Brendon laugh straight out loud.

"If you're going to slag me off," Brendon sneered, though not without a degree of amusement, "at least get your tenses right."

"Well excuse me all the way to—" but she was cut off again, this time ducking to avoid being hit in the side of the face by what appeared to be a small red-haired fairy riding a tiny broomstick and wearing dark green robes with a gold talon emblazoned on the chest. Fidelma slammed her palms against the tabletop hard enough to knock over a couple of goblets, and screamed down the table, "Righteous bloody hell, Eddie!"

The tiny figurine dipped, rolled, and dove to skim across the surface of the table, shot beneath a toppled goblet, and came up in a rapid climb in order to circle Desdemona's head. Zabini swatted at the figure to keep it from getting tangled in her hair, but it had already darted across the table, nearly crashing into Warren's forehead. He narrowly dodged to his right, and the figure made to circle back for a second attack when a voice down the table called out, "the Snitch has been caught!"

The figurine immediately abandoned its attempt to impale Bardsley and buzzed back up the table, and Victoire saw the miniscule numeral seven on the back of its robes as it whizzed by. She was quite certain that she was never going to get used to pocket-sized versions of her various family members. The miniature figurine of Ginvra Molly Potter sped past several seats, landing with a flourish on the open palm of Edwin Stocker.

"I thought you got yourself banned from Weasleys'!" Fidelma seethed.

Stocker shot her a mischievous smirk; "My cousins didn't." Then he turned back to his own partners-in-crime, Owen Goldstein and Julian Braddock, and the three of them roared laughter at the juvenile prank.

"My wand's going to slip this year," Fidelma hissed through gritted teeth. "I'm not a mean person; I don't want to hurt people. But he's going make me hurt him."

"Dear," Hecate said, leaning over the table, "don't tell us, or it'll be premeditated."

Fidelma snapped her eyes to Hecate's, and a tiny grin cracked her furious face.

At that moment, the doors swung open again and Professor Burbage swept into the Hall, trailed by what seemed like a never-ending line of anxious children. The line did end, of course, but not until Burbage had nearly reached the front of the Hall; the doors closed themselves after the last first-year had entered. Students scrambled for their seats as the line of eleven-year-olds congregated timidly behind the Deputy Headmaster.

"Professor Longbottom; if you please," Burbage called jovially, and the professor in question stepped around the Staff Table. He carried a rickety four-legged stool on which was perched the tattered, ancient Sorting Hat; under his arm was tucked a startlingly thick roll of parchment. Professor Longbottom was also a tall and strikingly handsome man, and a girl midway along the Gryffindor table let him know it by whistling her approval.

Several other students, including Hecate, voiced their agreement. The Headmistress twitched a grin at the attention being paid to her Herbology teacher. Longbottom, to his credit, gave no sign that he heard any of this, other than flushing a bit red in the face. He settled the stool on the dais in front of the Staff Table, handed off the scroll to Burbage, and returned to his seat between Professor Diggory and Professor Tonks.

The Hat sat motionless before its audience for a few silent seconds, then cracked open along the tear near the brim to sing. Victoire watched the first-years huddled behind Burbage, and couldn't help grinning at the unconcealed shock she saw on a few faces.

_"The oldest hat in Albion_

_ Will sing for you tonight_

_ And beg your pardon, Little Ones,_

_ For giving you a fright._

_ It must be strange to hear a piece_

_ Of headwear sing to you,_

_ But you will see far stranger things_

_ Before your schooling's through._

_ It's been my task for centuries_

_ To separate you lot_

_ And Sort you into Houses by_

_ The qualities you've got._

_ I've often reminisced about_

_ Those fabled Founders Four_

_ And which of all your aptitudes_

_ Each one was looking for._

_ But rarely have I made it known_

_ Just how alike they were,_

_ Not only in their dignity_

_ But in their character._

_ The wit of Godric Gryffindor,_

_ As sharp as his famed Sword;_

_ The bravery of Hufflepuff_

_ Was not to be ignored;_

_ Or how Rowena Ravenclaw_

_ Possessed great ambition;_

_ There was no more devoted friend_

_ Than cunning Slytherin._

_ As celebrated, and as much_

_ As history exalts,_

_ It is a somber fact of life:_

_ These Founders had their faults._

_ Godric was a hothead who was_

_ Prone to profanity;_

_ Rowena was quite arrogant_

_ And plagued by vanity;_

_ Helga was too often sure that_

_ She knew best of all;_

_ And Salazar was much too proud_

_ Of blood, if I recall._

_ I tell you this so you might see_

_ Your similarities,_

_ For each of you has all these traits_

_ To varying degrees._

_ Your House can't make you great; it is_

_ The other way around._

_ No matter where I Sort you, my_

_ Decision will be sound._

_ Now let me do this task before_

_ I'm put back on my shelf,_

_ But bear in mind (and I shall know):_

_ You really Sort yourself."_

Everyone stared in astonishment before breaking into uncertain applause. The Hat had never divulged so much about the Founders; it seemed to Victoire that many students would rather not know the flaws of their House's namesakes. Arrogance and vanity didn't strike Victoire as terribly loathsome, but she saw that several of her fellow Ravenclaws had, in fact, taken offense. Mostly, she thought, those who were vain or arrogant.

"Most illuminating!" Professor Burbage announced with a deep laugh, oblivious to the static of murmured discussion that had replaced the scattered clapping. He unwound one end of his roll of parchment, looking over the assemblage of apprehensive first-years.

"I will call each of you forward to take your turn donning the Sorting Hat," he told them, then smiled widely. "Let's have at it, then!"

Desdemona leaned toward Victoire. "One last time for old-times' sake."

Burbage called off the first name on his list: "Adams, John Quintus!" A short dark-haired boy worked his way out of the crowd, shuffled to the stool and climbed onto the seat. The Deputy Headmaster lifted the Hat and settled it on the boy's head, and the Hat deliberated for only a few moments before shouting out "GRYFFINDOR!"

The table on the far left roared in applause, and the proceedings were underway. The next first-year, Calliope Anderson, was sent by the Hat to Ravenclaw, and Victoire used her thumb and middle finger to add a piercing whistle to the raucous cheers. The next girl went to Hufflepuff; the girl after her wound up in Slytherin; the boy after that Sorted into Hufflepuff; the girl that followed him headed for Gryffindor. The next girl went to Slytherin, and then Margaret Davies came down the table to Ravenclaw to wild ovation.

The Sorting went on as Sortings usually do, each table endeavoring to out-cheer the others with every addition. Victoire kept up with the action, clapping and hollering and whistling as Ravenclaw picked up new students. Josephus Drake and Mordecai Ford found seats at the table; Theodore Hudson joined them, and Victoire laughed over the prospect of another "Ted" at Hogwarts; Feronia Knight was welcomed soon after.

The first brand-name first-year, as Hecate had taken to calling them, was Henry Longbottom. A round-faced boy, who, Victoire had been told, looked eerily like his father once had, blinked at the applause he received from all four tables. He spun to find his father; Professor Longbottom beamed broadly at the boy, and gestured encouragingly toward the stool. Henry stumbled across the platform, and stood beside Burbage as he fitted the Hat to the boy's head. He held his breath until the Hat bellowed "HUFFLEPUFF!"

The girl called up after Henry followed him into Hufflepuff, and then Professor Burbage called "Malfoy, Scorpius!" and the Hall went quiet. Victoire saw the blonde kid draw a long breath, cross the dais, and take his place on the rickety stool. Burbage placed the Hat on his head, and everyone waited for the announcement. Victoire heard a Gryffindor across the aisle snicker, "How long does it take to put a Malfoy in Slyth—"

"RAVENCLAW!" the Hat boomed. The kids of Slytherin table, poised to celebrate their latest acquisition, all looked struck by a Muscle-Freezing Hex. In the next moment, the students of Ravenclaw filled the void with their own ringing celebration as Scorpius strode down the aisle between the tables. He quickly found a seat between Anderson and Twycross, who greeted him with a thump on the back, across the table from Isolde.

Across the table from Victoire, McLaggen cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled. "Watch your backs, Snakes, we got a Malfoy!" setting off a chorus of laughter. Scorpius was still enjoying his welcome as the next three first-years went to Gryffindor in quick succession. Then Deborah Napier joined Ravenclaw, and tried unsuccessfully to slip into the nearest open seat without being noticed. Gryffindor claimed four of the next six; Hyfflepuff and Slytherin each took one. Natalie Pollock was sent to Ravenclaw, and she rushed from the platform to meet her sister Naomi, who squealed in delight.

Professor Burbage's face brightened infinitely as he wound his scroll and cried out feverishly, "Potter, Albus!" This time, the Hall went silent in a flash. No whispers; no murmurs; no muted mumbling. This was easily the most anticipated Sorting in the last four years, at least as historic as his older brother James's arrival, and perhaps even more so owing to the distinctive circumstances of his birth.

Albus pulled himself up onto the stool, and Professor Burbage lowered the Hat over his brow. Victoire heard various students laying wagers on which House would claim the Second Son of Potter; the heavy favorite was, of course Gryffindor, and Victoire glanced across the Hall to find James watching the Sorting with rapt attention. She couldn't tell from his expression whether he wanted his younger brother as a Housemate or not.

Victoire saw Albus apparently haggling with the Hat. His eyes suddenly flew open, and he looked about to blurt something out, but whatever it was he meant to say was instantly overwhelmed by the boom of the Sorting Hat's declaration: "SLYTHERIN!"


	4. Ravenclaw's Tower

Victoire heard more than a few gasps.

Albus looked stunned himself; Professor Burbage looked positively giddy over his newest prize. Professor Longbottom and Headmistress Primrose remained inscrutably composed, but even they seemed caught off-guard. For seven painful seconds, the Hall remained jammed up in a shocked silence, and then the eighty-odd students at the Slytherin table erupted in an ovation unlike any so far that evening. Apparently, whatever they had planned for Scorpius Malfoy had been bottled up, and they showered Albus with an adulation that dwarfed everything before.

He slid off the stool, the Sorting Hat still on his head. Burbage pulled it free, upsetting Albus's hair so that he looked even more like his father's younger self than usual. The professor leaned down to tell Albus something in private. The kid looked up at his new Head of House, his expression still bewildered and a trifle betrayed, and nodded his head before turning and heading down the aisle toward the table second from his left.

Victoire saw Isolde slapping the tabletop across from Twycross and heard her laughing and yelling at everything within earshot to pay up. Evidently, she had played the long odds and earned herself quite an unexpected fortune at her cousin's expense.

Slytherin paid no heed to the rest of the Sorting. Clearly, there was no greater catch for them than Albus Severus Potter. His new Housemates were practically clambering over each other to talk to him. He was, after all, named in part for a member of their own House that had been instrumental in the unfolding of the Second Wizarding War. He now looked doubly disoriented with this sudden celebrity heaped on top of his startling placement, but Victoire saw him responding to the kids peppering with him questions.

Fidelma leaned toward Victoire, huffing impatiently, "Are they nearly through?"

"Must be," Victoire estimated, looking over the dwindling group of eleven-year-olds. "We're into the R's already." The boy that followed Albus went to Hufflepuff, and then Mary Reynolds and Isaac Rhodes both came to Ravenclaw. Angus Roth was sent to Gryffindor; Sarah Rutherford went to Hufflepuff; Harmonia Shaw hurried to Gryffindor.

Valentine Sinclair was sorted into Ravenclaw, and several boys jostled to make a space for the brunette. Victoire tried to focus on the Sorting, and keep a running tally of who was going where, but her stomach was starting to distract her with unpleasant noises. She had anticipated the long day by eating a big breakfast, but now she couldn't fend off thoughts of a banquet that would rival even the best of her grandmother's holiday meals.

Desmond Thorne darted down the aisle to find a seat near Sinclair, and was quickly followed by Christopher Todd. The cluster of kids behind Burbage gradually shrank, but the only other first-year who attracted nearly as much attention as Albus had was his and Victoire's other cousin, Rose. When Burbage announced her, much of the conversation in the Hall faded. Even some of the Slytherins who had gotten over the excitement of receiving Albus were craning their necks to get a glimpse of Rose.

A boy leaned over from the Gryffindor table and asked Victoire, "Is that your sister?"

Hecate coughed out of a laugh. Victoire didn't look at the kid. "Never met her."

Victoire heard Desdemona snicker, but the kid pressed on uncertainly, "But…you've got the same last name…"

"Total coincidence," she answered blankly. A moment later, the Sorting Hat hollered "HUFFLEPUFF!" and the Hufflepuff table exploded in exuberant cheering and echoing applause. Victoire saw Henry Longbottom leap up from his seat and cry out "YEAH!" Rose dashed down to her new table with an indelible grin, shunting aside an older boy to get a seat next to Henry. The next girl, Artemis Wright, came to Ravenclaw, then Ephedra Zeller joined Albus at the Slytherin table. Almost an hour after taking the scroll from Professor Longbottom, Burbage rolled the parchment tight again with a brilliant smile.

"Congratulations to you all!" he exclaimed. "And welcome to Hogwarts!"

And with those words, the most glorious feast imaginable materialized before them. The pretence of manners was all but abandoned; Desdemona, Fidelma, Victoire and Hecate laid siege to the food as viciously as anyone else. No one paid the slightest ounce of notice to Professor Burbage as he collected the Hat, the stool, and the scroll, vacating the dais. He sidled back to his seat alongside the Headmistress, and started back into an ornate crystal chalice that almost certainly did not contain pumpkin juice.

In all, Ravenclaw picked up fifteen new students on the evening, out of a total class of fifty-eight. Victoire was staggered; it was the largest group of first-years in centuries. She glanced down the table, chewing a mouthful of ham. Most of the new kids had easily overcome their initial misgivings once dinner had appeared.

Halfway down the table, she spotted Scorpius Malfoy's white-blonde head. He was politely filling his plate with a reasonable amount of potatoes and corn and turkey, and talking spiritedly to Anderson on one side and Twycross on the other. He gestured wildly with his free hand to illustrate a point, then they all looked across the table and laughed.

Victoire decided that Scorpius would be worth keeping an eye on. Not because she expected him to be troublesome, but because she expected him to be interesting.

Victoire had had her fill by the time desert arrived. But Aunt Hermione had never missed an opportunity to remind all of the Weasley cousins that most of the amenities they enjoyed at Hogwarts were the product of unseen elf-work. So Victoire considered it a spectacular waste of such prodigious skill to let these luscious delicacies go uneaten.

She pulled a chocolate éclair onto her plate, and an arctic roll, and a bit of treacle tart for good measure. She picked at them each in turn, keeping an eye on Edwin, whose Mini-Ginny was currently pulverizing a date-and-walnut-loaf with a tiny Beater's bat, and listening to Brendon and McLaggen argue the moral implications of Parseltongue.

"So it's just a coincidence," McLaggen asked with every ounce of sarcasm he could muster, "that some of the darkest wizards in history just happened to talk to snakes?"

Brendon shook his head. "It's no more sinister than being able to talk to Thestrals."

"That's completely different," McLaggen insisted as though he really thought it was. "Thestrals haven't been historically associated with mass-murderers and soul-splitters."

"Right," Desdemona interjected, and Brendon looked pleasantly surprised. "They're just harbingers of tribulation and death." She flashed Brendon a supportive smile.

McLaggen threw up his hands. "Another acolyte in the Great Ophidian Conversion."

"If you're jealous," Fidelma suggested, "I'm sure he could teach you." She looked up from her banoffee pie, seeming to appraise him. "Though, considering your O.W.L.'s—"

"I don't want to talk to snakes," McLaggen cut in, ignoring Hecate's snide snicker and Brendon's appreciative smirk. "Herpo the Foul talked to snakes; Salazar Slytherin talked to snakes; Tom Marvolo Riddle talked to sna—"

"My uncle talked to snakes," Victoire offered conversationally. "He can't anymore, but for a long time, he was a Parselmouth."

"That's not fair," McLaggen demanded at the same time that Brendon said, "Thank you, Victoire."

"What's not fair?" Victoire asked. "He did. It's how he rescued the girl he married. And it's how my other uncle and _his_ wife managed to destroy one of Riddle's talismans."

"So you're saying," Brendon added, clearly determined to bludgeon McLaggen with the point: "that the Ophidian Language led to true love and the destruction of evil?" He turned emphatically toward Allen then and grinned. "Who would have thought?"

McLaggen turned to Victoire instead. "It's not fair," he explained calmly, "to invoke the Hallowed Triumvirate every time we find ourselves in a disagreement."

"He's got a point," Hecate mumbled around a mouthful of éclair. "You're aunt and uncles weren't exactly ordinary students."

McLaggen gave a favourable nod and looked ready to agree when the varied desserts vanished from the tables. The Headmistress stood; the Hall, which was subdued already with the hunger of its students sated, went fully quiet again. Professor Primrose smiled.

"To our new students: welcome. To our old students: welcome back."

The staff gave a courteous applause to that, and a handful of elder students joined in.

"I have just a few announcements to make before I dismiss you for the evening."

And here was something that Victoire certainly wouldn't miss on future September firsts: all the speeches. Fortunately, Professor Primrose appreciated brevity. She issued her usual admonition against venturing into the Forbidden Forest, which Victoire thought was quite unnecessary given the name of the Forest in question. She still couldn't fathom deliberately entering that Forest after the horrors she had heard about the Acromantula Wars the summer before she'd come to Hogwarts.

The Headmistress reminded them that try-outs for House Quidditch teams would be held during the second week of the term. "Those interested may apply with the captain of their House squad." A rustling of conversation followed that, and the Headmistress let it flare and fade before pressing on. "Finally, I am proud to introduce the newest addition to our staff. Madame Thomasina Chamberlain will be assuming the professorship of Muggle Studies in Mister Turing's stead."

The staff clapped politely again as the woman beside Professor Tonks stood briefly. Her distinctive burgundy tresses hung straight and nearly to her waist, and as she gave the students a curt nod, Victoire saw that her right eye was blue and her left eye was green. She also saw several of the older male students enthusiastically join in with the applause, at which point Chamberlain sank back into her seat with a tight smirk and a flutter of lavender robes.

Quiet quickly returned. Professor Primrose shook her hands free of her sleeves as she announced, "And now: to bed!" She clapped her hands together once, and a warm breeze rifled through the Hall, dimming the enchanted candles to a muted glow.

The seventh-year Ravenclaws once more effected a hasty evacuation in order to beat the rush of teenagers out of the Great Hall. Victoire and Warren hung back at the end of the table, rounding up first-years and directing them out of the traffic. Victoire took a quick head-count, found a baker's dozen children, spotted Calliope Anderson about to wander off with a group of Hufflepuffs, and reined her in, then caught Isaac Rhodes halfway up the table trying to figure out how to carry six Empire biscuits and a bowl of cranachan.

Once he had got his plunder balanced and joined the gaggle, Victoire called over the din, "Everyone follow after us, and stick close!"

"No dallying!" Warren added as Rhodes lurched to the front of the group, his snacks teetering, and Bardsley barked, "Not even for extra sweets!" He waved his wand toward Isaac, and the load of desserts vanished from the kid's hands. Rhodes looked fleetingly deflated, but kept pace with Victoire at the head of the line as she lead them out into the Entrance Hall and up the steps to the enormous marble Grand Staircase. Warren fell back to the end of the line to keep any errant stragglers from breaking off and getting lost.

After the luxuriant meal of the Welcoming Feast, the hike up the central stairs felt to Victoire like pushing a boulder up a hill while knowing that it would forever roll back down. She soldiered on, not thinking of all the steps she had still to climb, and distracting herself by explaining the stories of various portraits to her first-years. The tale of Sir Cadogan's epic campaign against the windmills of the Scottish Highlands seemed to interest them the most. By the time she finished spinning the story of his battle at the Dunkeld Tower, they had reached the end of a curving hallway and started up a spiral staircase.

They ascended the coil of steps rapidly before finally coming to an ancient wooden door. The only feature breaking its surface was a heavy bronze ring hung from an ornate carving of an eagle. Victoire stood beside the door on the small landing, waiting for the last of the group to catch up, and caught Warren's eyes at the back.

Then she asked: "Can anyone tell me the password?"

Several first-years exchanged apprehensive glances, clearly fearful that they were about to prove themselves unworthy of their own House. A low murmur rippled through them as various hypothetical codewords were theorized. A high voice at last broke out of the middle of the pack: "There isn't one."

The students parted, and Valentine Sinclair looked up at Victoire with smug triumph.

"Well done," Victoire said. "No password affords passage through this door. Only the answer to a riddle will grant you access to Ravenclaw's Tower."

She reached for the door knocker and hefted it, dropping it against the thick wood with a heavy bang. The carved eagle twisted its head, looked over the assembled students, and said in its melodious voice:

_ "I tell a tale of woe and dread,_

_ For I have lost my precious head;_

_ I'm made of stone; I am not dead,_

_ But blind as blind can be instead,_

_ I cannot see just where I tread._

_ Please tell me how to get a head."_

Victoire looked back to Sinclair, as did the rest of her fellow first-years. "Care to hazard a guess?" Victoire asked her, and the girl's haughty demeanor evaporated in a trice. She stood silently for a long moment. Victoire had begun to think that the girl would rather stand on the landing all night before admitting she didn't know.

Then she saw a blonde head lean close to Sinclair for a moment. Someone coughed. The girl's eyes lit up. She leaned forward, yelling louder than she intended, "Study!"

"Most astute," the eagle praised, and the door swung open. Rhodes hurried into the common room, followed by the rest of the first years. Sinclair rushed by Victoire without looking at her, but Scorpius caught her eye as he passed, the faintest hint of a grin still tugging at the corner of his mouth. He didn't look away as he nodded.

At last, Warren steered Napier and Wright through the door. He glanced to Victoire on his way through, mumbling "Firsties" with a small laugh.

Victoire followed him through into the moonlit common room. Most of the first-years stood captivated, either by the dramatic panorama afforded by the soaring arched windows, or by the vaulted ceiling painted with the constellations of the Northern Sky. She nodded along as Warren explained the dormitory arrangements and curfews before ordering the students to their rooms to unpack and settle in for the evening.

They complied with a minimum of grumbling, and soon enough the common room had emptied again. A pleasant fire crackled in the hearth in front of a long soft couch. Victoire caught Warren watching her as they stood alone in the wide circular space.

"So," he started to say, and she heard the cocky lilt in his voice that meant he was building toward a boorish innuendo.

She sighed, pre-empting him with a mumbled, "Sleep sounds good."

He looked about ready to use that as a springboard for a substitute remark. She stalked by him before he could organize one, passing the tall white marble statue of Rowena Ravenclaw and heading through the doorway to the dormitories above. At the top of that final set of stairs, she pushed through the door into the bedroom. Fidelma had already passed out on top of her blanket, still dressed in her school robes, an issue of _Seekers Weekly_ laid out open on her face.

Hecate and Desdemona were comparing and contrasting American boys with British boys. While Victoire would ordinarily have joined such a heated discussion, the fatigue of the day weighed on her like lead. Tybalt had already curled himself up on top of the trunk at the foot of her bed. She felt herself crossing the room to her own four-poster, muttering agreement along the way to a comment about dialects, and collapsing into her pillow with a satisfying thump. She mustered enough energy to mumble "_occludo,_" and her curtains snapped themselves shut.

She closed her eyes in the darkness. In the instant it took her to blink, she crossed over from wakefulness into sleep. The precincts of the dormitory fell away, and she emerged into the gentle haze of her oldest, most calming, recurring dream.

She felt as though she had always been sitting on the wooden bench of this small rowboat, floating listlessly on the smooth surface of a sprawling lake. Hogwarts Lake, she knew, and smiled. A gossamer mist obscured everything beyond a few fathoms in any direction. Victoire was aware of several grey shadows looming vaguely in the distance. These, too, made her smile. They were cause for comfort, not fear.

Drifters, like herself, on this sea of dreams.


	5. Principles of Defence

Victoire's weekend passed uneventfully.

She and her roommates spent most of Saturday trading summer stories. The discussion between Hecate and Desdemona had carried over from the previous night, and Victoire got the abridged version during breakfast.

"Hecate's sworn off British boys," Desdemona announced as she scooped up a heap of egg-yolk with a shard of toast.

Hecate sipped her coffee and sighed. "I didn't say that."

"Might as well have," Fidelma threw in between mouthfuls of eggs.

"She met _Drew_." Desdemona emphasized the point by drawing out the syllable of the name. "And he simply ruined her for other men."

"Particularly British men," Fidelma added. Desdemona nodded.

"Never said that," Hecate insisted.

"She was in Chicago," Desdemona said importantly; "touring the States with her dad, you know." Victoire knew that Hecate had spent the summer visiting cities across North America. Hugo Fleming had held a marathon of book signings for his latest novel, _Winding Time_, and Hecate had kept Victoire updated on all of the literary fervor. Victoire nodded.

Desdemona went on: "They were at Colonic Books—"

"Myopic Books," Hecate cut across her with a laugh.

"Myopic Books," Desdemona corrected grandly without skipping a beat. "And she was up on the third floor, and there he was, standing across the history section—"

"Philosophy section!" Hecate interrupted.

"Philosophy section," Desdemona amended dreamily, looking off rather as if she herself recalled spotting Drew across the history section of Colonic Books. She sighed contentedly, and Fidelma burst out laughing. "He already had his copy of Winding Time with the seven-handed pocketwatch on the cover, and he was flipping through a Ronald McDonald book —"

Fidelma doubled up as Hecate looked ready to fly into a conniption. "De Souza!" she yelled through her own broad grin. "De Souza, you harpy! Ronald De Souza!" She snatched a strip of bacon off Desdemona's plate and flung it at the girl. Desdemona dodged, but the bacon caught her hair anyway, sending Victoire into a fit of giggles. Fidelma reached thoughtfully to Desdemona's hair, plucked the bacon free, sniffed at it once, and promptly ate it.

That got Hecate laughing, but she still managed to keep up her admonitions. "This is why you don't get to tell my stories! You are a terrible storyteller!"

"Your stories are boring," Desdemona countered. "Blah-blah-blah you met at a bookstore; blah-blah-blah you went to a movie; blah-blah-blah you walked in Hyde Park and did it in the moonlight, and you're pregnant with his triplets, and you're getting married."

Hecate's face flushed. "Not pregnant! Not getting married!"

Victoire found Hecate's reaction inexplicably hilarious. "So you did it in the moonlight?"

Hecate's color deepened. "Not your business!"

"Now dear," Fidelma said with a maternal tone: "your sex-life is everyone's business."

Hecate faltered for one brief moment, then pointed a condemning finger at Desdemona. "As if you should talk!" Desdemona mimed a who-me gesture as if she couldn't believe this turn of events; Hecate hurled her accusation. "With your little love-nest at the Three Broomsticks!"

Victoire faked a gasp. "No," Desdemona shook her head as if this were a malicious rumor she had already dispelled. "No-no-no," she feigned innocence, then undermined it by breaking out in a lascivious grin. "That's just where I met a few guys a few times a week."

"Hussy!" Hecate proclaimed, laughing.

"There was a girl, too," Fidelma revealed with a smirk. Desdemona looked ready to deny it, but only shrugged in admission. Victoire gasped again, louder. "I saw them," Fidelma nodded gravely. "She was a redhead."

"Indecisive hussy!" Hecate specified. Desdemona cocked an eyebrow with that grin.

Fidelma leaned over the table. "That's where she met _Mike_."

"His name," Desdemona supplied haughtily, grinning, "is Michael Mallatratt."

"Oh yes," Fidelma concurred, "Monsieur Mallatratt, son of Sophia Scrivenshaft." She gave Victoire a significant look. "Heir apparent to the Quill Shop in Hogsmeade."

Victoire composed a suitably impressed reaction, and Fidelma continued. "He was sitting there, all alone, at the counter of the Three Broomsticks, nursing a bilderberry cocktail." She waved a hand at Desdemona, "and three drinks later, `Mona winds up commiserating with him over the terrible burden of working under parents with family stores to protect."

"I was doing eight-hour shifts four days a week at my mother's boutique," Desdemona contended. "Customizing clothes for finicky clients." She sneered. "I don't sew."

"But she does take free drinks from certain honey-eyed Hufflepuffs," Hecate laughed.

Desdemona crossed her arms. "It would have been rude to turn him down."

"Right," Hecate nodded shrewdly, grinning. "Of course."

The four of them headed out of the Great Hall, and Fidelma resumed her narrative as they ascended through the Castle. "The next time `Mona met Mike, he was drinking with a couple of friends. Christopher Blotts and Julian Fortescue." She scoffed. "More guys itching to lament the regrettable luck of being born into prosperous families."

"Called themselves the Heirs of Parents," Hecate said, rolling her eyes.

Desdemona turned to Victoire as if she considered herself above this banter. "The redhead was Bellona Malkin. Lovely girl." Then she wheeled on Fidelma: "And you're one to criticize who I spent the summer with."

Hecate snickered. "Do you even remember who you spent the summer with?"

"Most of them," Fidelma granted. "I distracted myself with a different boy in every town the Middlesex Panthers traveled to." She flicked a look at Hecate. "A British boy, no less." She turned to Victoire. "Two, in a couple of cities. Gave Eadulf no end of grief along the way."

"He ended up in a couple of fights," Hecate explained. "Defending his sister's honor."

Desdemona snorted loudly. The harsh sound made Victoire laugh, and Fidelma grinned.

"I met up with Theo during the Somerset match," She assured them. "He was pulling for the Sabres, but he didn't know any better." She flashed a grin. "We had some heated discussions."

Hecate snickered. "Arguing about cricket was just a bit of foreplay?"

"Not always," Fidelma shook her head. "Sometimes we argued about Quidditch." She tilted her head toward Victoire. "Cannons fan."

Victoire cringed. For Fidelma, a diehard Harpies loyalist, to voluntarily spend time with a known Cannons fan spoke volumes for Theo's other attributes.

"Didn't stop her from succumbing to the charms of a certain chocolate-eyed Slytherin," Desdemona tossed in as they started up the circular stairs toward Ravenclaw Tower.

"Would've been rude to turn him down," Fidelma retorted with a smirk.

"Of course," Victoire agreed as she reached the wooden door at the top of the staircase.

A pair of first-years stood awkwardly on the landing. Rhodes, Victoire recognized, and she thought with less certainty that the other was Napier. Apparently both had failed to impress the eagle with their acumen, and both now waited on the arrival of yet another student. Rhodes looked as if he needed to relieve himself quite urgently. The eagle turned to Desdemona now.

_ "If my name be spoken, _

_ I shall be broken."_

"Silence," Desdemona replied without a thought, and the door swung open.

Rhodes dashed through. Napier followed sheepishly. The seventh-years filed in after, collapsing into a pair of couches under a window that overlooked the Black Lake. The common room was uncommonly active as most of the first-years acquainted themselves with their fellow classmates, and the older students reacquainted themselves with their friends. Victoire spotted Scorpius Malfoy engaged in what appeared to be a brutal match of wizard's chess against Mordecai Ford. A cluster of students watched them, each calling out strategic advice.

"So wait," She turned back to Hecate suddenly. "You and Drew did it in Hyde Park?"

"So romantic," Desdemona sighed wistfully. Fidelma laughed.

Hecate threw her hands up. "Why does it always come back to my sex-life?"

Before heading to bed Saturday night, the six Ravenclaw prefects spent an hour tracking down strays. They found Feronia Knight trying to negotiate a circular staircase that rotated with each step she took, and located two more disoriented first-years wandering near the kitchens.

Victoire unpacked on Sunday while Tybalt prowled the grounds. She met Rosalind Archer in the Great Hall after lunch to get a copy of the patrol schedule. Then she ventured out across the campus to stake out her usual hideaway beneath a hunched sallow-tree along the southern shore of the Black Lake, and settled in to finish her own copy of _Winding Time_.

She nodded off sometime in the middle of the afternoon. She didn't sleep long; the sun was still up when she woke, and Tybalt was nosing around near the shore. The wind had brought her around, sweeping through the soft whispergrass that fringed the Lake, and Victoire listened to the faintly murmured voices that gave the grass its name. Tybalt's ears twitched. Victoire heard clips and snatches of muted conversations, and ghostly laughter.

She looked across the Lake as a young thestral glided low, beat its powerful wings against the air, and disappeared over the canopy of the Forest. A firelark cried out its solemn song.

She thought of her dream, and contemplated who her fellow drifters might be.

The sun dipped, and she headed up to the Castle for dinner before ascending back to the Tower. One of the armchairs had been turned to face the wall of the common room, and she wondered briefly why. Then an argument broke out between Fidelma and Edwin Stocker concerning the quintessence of Quidditch. Fidelma, the House-team Seeker, argued that the point of the game was catching the Snitch as quickly as possible; Edwin, a House-team Chaser, argued that the point of the game was scoring as many goals as possible. Neither yielded.

Victoire later heard a rumor that Isolde and Twycross had turned the chair around in order to snog in solitude. She felt absolutely no urge to learn for herself.

Victoire was in bed by eleven, and awake again before six, showered and dressed and waiting outside the Great Hall when the doors opened for breakfast. She loaded up a plate, and worked on the food until Professor Dawkins made his way to her and handed over her schedule. Her classes did not surprise her. She finished her breakfast and nursed a coffee until her classmates arrived. Once they received their schedules and ate their fill, Victoire, Hecate, Brendon, Fidelma, and Desdemona left the Great Hall for History of Magic.

When the bell rang, Professor Binns materialized behind his desk, doleful and thoroughly oblivious to his students. Without preamble, he began detailing Gellert Grindelwald's campaign through Europe and its improbable ties to Godric's Hollow. Victoire would have sworn that she'd paid attention to the lecture, but by the time the class ended, she couldn't remember half of what her Notetaker had written for her. She spent her half-hour break skimming the notes, trying to get a sense of the material, before heading to a second floor classroom for Charms.

Professor McDonald spent forty minutes reviewing sixth-year material, insisting that NEWT level Charms required a strong foundation in the fundamentals. She even dipped back into fifth-year spells for a few minutes when Margaret Carmichael somehow managed to transform a chess knight into an Etruscan Shrew instead of just changing it from black to green. After deanimating the frantic little blighter, McDonald closed out the hour by discussing her syllabus.

Victorie felt sure that the time could have been better spent. But as Warren described the byzantine Arithmantic homework he'd been assigned over lunch, she counted herself lucky.

At ten minutes to one, the girls of Ravenclaw set out with Warren for the third floor. They were among the first to arrive, though Stephen Holmes had already staked out a desk along with Slytherin's superstar Seeker Auberon Harper and the Fidelma's black-haired Somerset fan who Victoire now, finally, recognized as Theodore Pope. She found it preposterous that she could have forgotten, since he had been the first Muggle-born Sorted into Slytherin in thirty years.

The Ravenclaws took their own seats as the rest of the class filtered in. A handful of rowdy Gryffindors arrived last, at just the moment that the bell rang, in no particular rush to fill into the remaining seats. "I'm telling you, Cam," one of the boys laughed to his friend, unmindful of how loud he was, "she so would! Don't even tell me you didn't see the way she – "

His sentence was drowned out by the sound of a door opening. The Gryffindor boys jostled each other as they found seats, paying little attention to the woman emerging from the office at the top of the short staircase at the head of the room. The Professor descended the stairs leisurely, betraying no sign that she was aware of any boorish teenage behavior in her room.

Cameron laughed once at whatever his Housemate told him, then finally quieted down as the teacher reached her desk. Victoire rubbed her thumb against the grain of the wand in her right hand, glanced over the cover of the textbook set out on her desk. She knew what was coming, and she grinned at how easily these Gryffindors had forgotten.

Professor Tonks started Defence Against the Dark Arts the same way every year, and she never disappointed.

Now she shifted a few sheaves of parchment on her desk, skimmed down a list, and glanced over her glasses at the class. Victoire saw her eyes sweep the room briefly, pause for an instant on Cameron, then flick back down to her parchments. Completely unmindful, Cameron leaned back in his seat, his right leg crossed over his knee, his left arm draped over the back of the chair.

Victoire saw then that Cameron's wand was poking out of a pocket of his bookbag, which he had inconveniently stowed beneath his chair. She smirked.

"What is the first principle of Defence?" Tonks posed without looking up. The last bits of muted conversation died as several hands went up. The Professor straightened up, still not looking at her students, and started around the desk. "Mister Peakes?"

Cameron's eyes went wide for a moment, and he grinned. "Strike first."

Victoire saw the corner of Professor Tonk's mouth twitch, and thought maybe her teacher might have appreciated Cameron's attempt. "Strike first," she mused, considering. "Intriguing." She rounded the desk, her hands together and her fingers laced in front of her midsection. Now she looked over the class, and selected a student with her hand in the air. "Miss Thackery?"

"Keep your wand in reach," Fidelma announced, lowering her arm.

"Correct," the Professor nodded. "Someone tell me why."

Hands went up again. Cameron glanced to his friend, smirked, made no move toward his bookbag. Victoire couldn't even feel bad for the kid; he really was asking for it.

Tonks made her selection: "Mister Pope?"

"Without a wand, you have no defence," the Slytherin answered.

"Correct," Tonks agreed. "Case in point," she continued, opening her hands and drawing her wand from the cuff of her right sleeve in one fluid motion. She flicked the wand in Cameron's direction and said quite calmly, "_Collopanum adstringo_."

The Gryffindor started to grin again. "Wha—" he started, but was cut off when his gold-and-red tie constricted itself around his neck. He fumbled forward, flailed, fingers digging at the knot of the tie as it pressed against his windpipe. Tonks put just a little more force into the Hex for just a moment, and Cameron retched harshly once, and then the teacher let up.

Cameron gasped, yanked his tie loose, glared at the Professor as he rubbed at his throat.

"How might that have been avoided?" the teacher asked, almost as if she hadn't just tried to strangle a student with his own House-tie. "Mister Holmes?"

"A basic Shield Charm would have done the job," Stephen said, and Victoire could hear the grin on his voice. "Or even a moderately effective Deflection Charm."

"Both viable options," Tonks conceded. She turned back to Cameron, who was holding his throat as if he suspected Tonks might attempt to throttle him again. Victoire wouldn't have been surprised. She saw the markings on the side of Cameron's just above his collar, four tattooed little septagrams in a strange yet familiar zigzag formation. She smirked at his expression. He looked a bit like he wanted to cast a Skin Sloughing Curse at Tonks. Of course, without his wand, it was all for naught. "And what do both of those spells require, Mister Peakes?"

Leaning on his desk, Cameron said through a clenched jaw: "A wand."

"Too right," Tonks acceded. "Ten points to Gryffindor," she granted, then added with a tight little smile, "for learning the hard way."

The points seemed to mollify Peakes. He grudgingly bent to his bag to fish out his wand as the professor addressed the rest of the class. "What is the second principle of Defence?"

Hands shot up. Tonks again selected a student who had not volunteered: "Mister Ackerley?"

"Know your environment," Ackerley responded. He didn't look away from his wand, and though he was perfectly polite, he didn't mask the undercurrent of irritation in his voice either.

"Correct," the Professor affirmed, and Ackerley glanced up and met the teacher's eyes. Tonks watched him for another second before flicking her wand toward Victoire: "_Infusculus_."

Victoire's first impulse was to throw a Scattering Counterjinx, but she resisted the urge. An instant later, a cloud of inky blackness bloomed across her vision. She tightened her grip on her wand, drawing a slow breath as she heard Professor Tonks from across the room.

"Identify the exits, Miss Weasley."

She thought a moment, then answered: "A door to the third floor corridor, and another to your office." She tried to visualize the exterior wall to her left; it looked out over the courtyard. Five windows, or six. She couldn't recall and the silence was stretching, so she concentrated and thought the word _bâtontrevois_. The Glimpsing Charm caused the tip of her wand to spark, and for one instant, an image of the room appeared with perfect clarity before dissolving into the blackness of the teacher's Blinding Jinx. "And six windows lining the wall to the left."

"How might the door to my office serve you?" Tonks asked with a trace of amusement.

"You've got a fireplace in your office," Victoire replied. "Unless the ewer of Floo Powder on your bookcase is empty. Short of that, there's a window on either side of the hearth."

"Nobody likes a show-off, Miss Weasley," Tonks admonished, but when Victoire's vision returned, she saw a small smile on her teacher's lips. "Ten points for Ravenclaw, though I don't know whether to dock you five or give you five for that little nonverbal cheat of yours."

Victoire smirked then. "Call it a wash?"

Tonks almost laughed, then proceeded on with her lesson.


	6. Spellcraft

By the end of class, Professor Tonks had demonstrated all nine principles of Defence.

While her friends headed to Transfiguration, Victoire retreated to the Library and spent her free period getting started on her History essay. She had been assigned to describe the results of Grindelwald's recruitment efforts among the Canadian Colddrake colony in Saskatchewan.

She located a volume on early 20th Century dragon politics called _Playing With Fire_, and scoured a dense chapter on the North American unrest. She skimmed through _In the Dragon's Claws_, a memoir written by a deepcover Hit Wizard who had spent two decades infiltrating Grindelwald's operations. She did manage to unearth an 1888 issue of _the Practical Potioneer_ featuring an article discussing some of the truly horrific uses for the Colddrake's venom.

The article fueled Victoire's curiosity. She began to formulate a thesis around the notion that Grindelwald had been trying to broker an alliance with the dragons merely as a pretense for acquiring their venom. That, perhaps, he had intended to develop some devastating weapon with it. Victoire made a Copy of the article for herself and headed back into the Periodicals Section.

She returned the original and started back to her table. Halfway down the aisle she stopped when she caught sight of three first-years clustered around a table, _the Standard Book of Spells: Grade 1_ open in front of them, a feather laid across it. Rose Weasley and Henry Longbottom sat on one side, facing Albus Potter, their wands drawn as Rose pointed out a line in the book.

"You're saying it wrong," Victoire heard Rose sigh, with all the weariness of a woman repeating herself. "It's Wing-_gar_-dium Levi-_o_-sa; that _gar_ needs to be long and clear."

"You do it then," Albus snapped, "if it's so easy."

Rose straightened, regarded her cousin shortly, then rolled up the sleeve of her robe. She gave her wand just the right amount of swish-and-flick, said "_Wingardium Leviosa_." The feather rose off the desk and hovered a foot from the tabletop. Albus dropped his head into his hands.

"Told you she knew her stuff, mate," Henry told Albus with a grin.

Victoire watched the entire exchange with a dizzying sense of history repeating. Here was a Potter and a Weasley and, standing in for an absent Granger, a Longbottom to round out this trio. She had heard stories of her aunt-and-uncles' first year enough times to imagine she'd been there. Now, as Rose and Albus and Henry bickered over an incantation, she might have been watching it. Another snatch of poetry occurred to her, this one ancient and Hebrew and prophetic:

_A threefold cord is not quickly broken_.

She was relieved to see Rose and Albus making an effort to remain close despite their House assignments. The two had been thick as thieves growing up, and they should have been, having been born four days apart. Granted, the year had only just begun, so they had yet to see how the interhouse politics of the School would affect their dynamic. But Victoire knew from experience that ending up in different Houses could be beneficial to family. She, for instance, had gotten on considerably better with her sister during the summers since Simone started school.

As she watched her cousins (and Henry really was more like extended family than just the son of a friend), Victoire heard a clear chiming. She glanced around the room quickly, saw several other students do the same, and spotted her sister several tables away with a few of her fellow fourth-year Hufflepuffs. Simone was reading a tattered copy of _the Psychology of the Patronus_ while another girl poured over the _Daily Prophet_'s crossword puzzle.

Victoire also recognized Michael Sturgis from the prefects' meeting. She watched him rifle hastily through his bookbag, dig out what looked like an oversized pocketwatch, and flip the face open. He looked at the watch for a long, hesitant moment as that chiming continued, then clicked the stem to silence the alarm. He glanced around the room, saw Victoire looking at him, and grinned apologetically. Victoire grinned back, shook her head, and returned to her table.

At quarter to four, she packed up her supplies back and left for the Southeast Tower. She trotted briskly, took steps two-and-a-time, and realized that she was actually eager. This was one of the classes she had really been looking forward to this year. As much as she enjoyed her Defence classes – and Tonks was, after all, a fearsome Dueling Champion with a compelling teaching style – the subject just couldn't appeal to her cerebral nature like Thaumatology.

It didn't hurt that her Head of House taught the class. She had impressed him enough in his sixth-year Occlumency elective that he had recommended she take his magical-theory course.

Hecate was waiting when Victoire arrived, paging through Mair Llewellyn's book, _Essence_. The circular classroom looked like it might have gone unused since Salazar Slytherin laid the final stone. Heavy drapes hung across the windows. A decrepit desk stood in front of a worn blackboard that had been Repaired so many times that some of the cracks were now permanent. Nine desks formed a rough arc, and Hecate had staked out a seat second to the far end.

Hecate was the only one of her friends that she'd managed to persuade to apply for the elective. Desdemona had opted to finish out Ancient Runes in order to learn Ogham so that she could finally read the Aos Sí epics, and Fidelma had made it clear that spending her free period perfecting the subtle science of Snitch-snatching was an infinitely better use of her time.

Victoire dropped into the last seat, beside Hecate, and they discussed Drew. His full name was Andrew Calvin Benson III, and he had graduated from Charmbridge Academy earlier in the year. His mother was an Illinois state senator; his father was a lawyer. He was the first member of his family to demonstrate any magical aptitude, and he had read everything that Hugo Fleming ever published. Even the early bodice-rippers he wrote under a pseudonym to pay the bills.

Two Gryffindors arrived: Ed Snelling, Keeper of his House Quidditch sqaud, and Victoria Hobbes. The only Slytherin in the class was Percival Marsh. Four Hufflepuffs rounded out the group, and at a minute to four, Professor Saul Dawkins trundled into the room. He flicked his hand toward each of the windows in turn, and the drapes drew themselves aside to let some air and light circulate through the room. Dawkins moved with a distinctive gait that was not quite labored, but somewhere near to it, as if he had lived nine or ten lives during his 74 years.

The teacher reached his desk, stopping in front of it. He looked over the students, nodding as he recognized each of their faces. After regarding Victoire, he sat back against the edge of his desk and crossed his arms over his chest. "You've all been studying magic for years," he started, his voice as worn as the blackboard behind him, "and using it for most of your lives." He looked over the rough arc of students. "Surely, then, one of you can tell me how magic works." He settled on one of the Hufflepuffs at the center of the line. "Nathan?"

"A spell," he said, straightening up, ready to impress, "works by combining a precise wand movement with an exact incantation."

"How about a potion?" Dawkins pressed. "No wand or incantation there."

Nathan continued, undeterred. "A potion works by combining precise amounts of specific ingredients in an exact order."

"Both accurate explanations," the professor granted; "five points for brevity." Nathan eased back in his seat, satisfied with his answers, and Dawkins addressed the rest of the group: "Now I'll give fifty points to anyone who can answer my original question."

Confusion flashed on Nathan's face. He leaned forward as the teacher called, "Victoria?"

Hobbes considered. Victoire watched her pick at the Celtic ring on her index finger with the nail of her thumb, a nervous tic the girl had displayed since third year. Hobbes replied: "A spell functions by focusing the intention of a phrase through the channel of a wand's magical core."

Dawkins smirked. "Five points," he said, "for so eloquently rewording Mr. Wallingford's answer." He turned to Victoire and Hecate, deliberated a moment, then chose: "Hecate?"

Hecate quirked an eyebrow. "Magic works in magical ways not meant to be understood."

"Five points," the Professor laughed affably, "for avoiding the question with philosophy."

Hecate nodded with affected graciousness. "Thank you, sir."

The Professor returned the gesture with a wry grin, and stood. "No one has a substantially different answer to this most elementary of questions?"

They all ruminated, each anxious to decipher this riddle. They had each been recommended for this class, after all, and they each wanted to demonstrate their aptitude. Wallingford traded glances with his fellow Hufflepuffs to determine if any of them knew more than he did. No one offered another solution. Marsh watched, content to wait out the purpose of this lesson.

"For six years," Professor Dawkins resumed, "you've been performing increasingly complex magic, and learning ever more complicated methods of manipulating the fabric of reality." He paused, sighed. It may have been for effect, and Victoire found it successful. "And in all that time," he rounded out, "no one has felt compelled to explain the fundaments of spellcraft."

As the nine of them watched the teacher, one of Wallingford's classmates timidly raised her hand. Dawkins gestured to her: "Josephine?"

"If we've learned how to cast spells and prepare potions," she ventured, "then what is it that we don't understand?"

"Well now," Dawkins answered, "there is the first crucial step." The corner of his mouth twitched into the beginnings of a grin. "Examining the limitations of knowledge."

He drew his wand from an inner pocket of his robe, looked at it thoughtfully, as if he had never considered it properly before. "We so often wave our wands and intone our spells" – he flourished the wand toward Hobbes, said _Accio book_; the copy of _the Art of Sacrifice in Chess_ that sat on her desk shot through the air, and he caught it with his free hand – "that eventually we imagine that to be the extent of magic. But what if there is more?"

He tapped the book, said _Evanesco_. The volume vanished.

"What if there is an unseen aspect that we have failed to comprehend?" He waved the wand at Hobbes again, said _Appareo liberi_. The book reappeared on her desk. "What is it that we don't understand?" With the attention of the class secured, Professor Dawkins started around his desk. "To perform magic with an incomplete understanding of its mechanics is, in my estimation, incredibly dangerous." He stood next to his high-backed seat, smirked. "Rather like giving you Gubraithian Fire and just hoping you don't burn all of Glasgow to the ground."

He settled his wand on the desk and lowered himself into his seat. "If I had my way, this class would be compulsory from first-year on," he said, laying his hands over his stomach. "But the Board of Governors rejects my petition for core-status every year, and for the same reason." He shook his head, smiled ruefully. "There is no consensus on these issues."

Dawkins leaned forward in his seat, propping himself on the armrest. "There are alternate theories and counterarguments to every point we will discuss. School guidelines require me to inform you that in this class, the material that we cover is what I chose because I, personally, believe it to be accurate. There are countless suppositions and speculations in Thaumatological theoretics. But here," he said with a defiant grin, "we will examine my own best guesses."

He let his students process that, then offered a sympathetic smile. "So let's get started."

He snapped his wand off the desk, gestured over his shoulder toward the blackboard with it, said _Perscribiso_. The word _MAGIC_ appeared in slanted handwriting across the top of the slate. "As Mister Wallingford and Miss Hobbes concurred, there are at least two elements necessary to incant any magical spell." He gestured again; a numeral One appeared, and the word _SPELL_ beside it. "The spell is the Intention that guides magic." Another gesture; a numeral Two appeared, and the word _WAND_. "And the wand is the Instrument that guides magic."

Dawkins smirked. "Miss Fleming finds these notions to be profound mysteries."

"Incomprehensible," Hecate agreed, shaking her head with a grin.

"Nevertheless," he soldiered on, undaunted. "These two components appear sufficient at first glance." He pushed himself out of his seat now and looked over the words written on the board. "But in fact, they necessitate, by their very natures, a third critical element."

Professor Dawkins gestured a third time, and the numeral Three appeared at the bottom of the list. He looked over the class again. "Anyone care to proffer a postulation?"

Each of them wanted the credit for solving this challenge. Their collective silence proved as much. Even Marsh was staring at the blackboard, brow furrowed in contemplation. Dawkins, in turn, watched them think, not bothering to hide his small grin. Victoire looked down the short list on the board, and knew that the answer was somehow the average of those three words.

"Long and long ago," Dawkins cut through the quiet, launching into what seemed for all the world to be an utterly random tangent, "Prometheus tricked Zeus into accepting a worthless offering, and set an example that humans would follow." He stepped out from behind the desk, rounding the room as he spun his tale. "And Zeus was infuriated at being hoodwinked."

He reached a cabinet toward the back of the room then, picking over the clutter resting on top of it. "For being denied his proper tribute, Zeus punished humans by hiding fire from them." Dawkins set aside a Remembrall and a pair of Spectrespecs, and found a pewter plate. He lifted it, glancing at his reflection in the surface, and headed back to his desk with it. "Now, being the great humanist that he was, Prometheus proceeded to steal fire back from his cousin."

He set the plate down on his desk. Then he plucked a sheet of parchment from the top of a stack, balled it up in his fist, and placed it on the center of the plate. "He hid that flame in a giant fennel-stalk, and at his earliest opportunity, he brought it back to Mankind." Here he pointed his wand at plate, said "_incendio_"; the wad of parchment burst into flames, crackling merrily.

"Now," he said, rubbed at his chin and watching the flames, "fire is a funny thing."

Dawkins stepped to a bookcase standing next to the window. A dusty glass bowl sat atop it, holding an odd assortment of gobstones, and he emptied them out into a basket on the floor. "It is actually a combination of three separate elements," he explained, returning to his desk and the burning parchment. Victoire saw now how this little narrative detour fit into the discussion.

"The flames are a reaction of a spark and a source of fuel," he told them, blowing the dust out of the bowl, "but a third unseen element contributes to the process." Now he flipped the bowl and lowered it like a dome onto the plate, over the burning parchment. The fire struggled in its enclosure, shrinking and fading as the flames that had been made with magic used up the last of the oxygen under the dome and sputtered out.

"Air," Hobbes realized out loud.

Dawkins glanced to her with a tiny grin. "Quite so." He tapped the glass bowl, producing a clean, musical note that rang through the room. "Likewise, any psiotic effect is just a reaction of a spell and a wand. An reaction," he hinted, "that is shaped by a spell, and guided by a wand."

Victoire felt as if a hundred blobs of paint suddenly coalesced into a portrait. The simplicity of the solution was quite nearly absurd, and she smiled as she started to explain that the answer was already on the board. Then she heard as Marsh beat her to it: "Magic itself."

"Exactly," Dawkins confirmed, his enthusiasm stoked now that one of them had deduced the solution. "Magic itself." Victoire shot a glance at Marsh, who looked more relieved than smug. Dawkins explained: "because if it can be guided by a wand and shaped by a spell, then it follows logically that it must exist on its own separate from either the wand or the spell."

He gestured to the board, with WAND and SPELL listed as constituent parts of MAGIC. "This paradigm will work for just about anything you're bound to do, but it is nevertheless incorrect." He turned to his students. "Magic is not the sum of a wand plus a spell."

Dawkins gestured to the board again. The word MAGIC dissolved from the top of the list and rematerialized next to the numeral Three. "It is a distinct entity that complements them."

On cue, those three words came unmoored, drifting across the slate to the three points of a triangle. And to illustrate the point, a blossom of heatless blue flames bloomed at the center of the board, flanked by that trio of numinous elements. The Professor looked over the nine of them, and flashed a small smile as he found them all thoroughly engrossed in his subject.

"In order to understand how magic works, we will examine what magic actually is."


	7. Independent Study

Victoire left the Southeast Tower in a bit of a daze.

She and Hecate tromped back up to their dormitory to drop off their bookbags. Desdemona was waiting in the common room, reading a book on Futhorc to pass the time. Fidelma arrived ten minutes later, sweating, bruised, and grinning, and declined Hecate's suggestion that she grab a shower before dinner while the rest of them waited. She didn't even bother to change out of her Quidditch robes before they left for the Great Hall, insisting that she had no one to impress.

Victoire thought otherwise. She had an idea that Fidelma knew exactly who her unashamed athletic roughness would impress. She grinned, saw Desdemona do the same, and said nothing.

On Tuesday morning, straight after breakfast, Professor Burbage put his Potions class to work skinning Starthistle seeds. They'd need four grams each of seedpulp, he told them, to start their batches of Tabulatrum. Four grams didn't sound like much until he removed the cover from a bushel the size of a bathtub overflowing with tiny little seeds. Starthistle seedpulp could be purchased, he explained, but it was expensive, and for reasons they would shortly discover.

It was mind-numbingly tedious. The work had to be done by hand with a copper-bladed knife, and the miniscule bit of pulp in each seed hardly justified the effort of opening the blasted things. About twenty minutes into the project, Fidelma thought it might be a good idea to try a Shucking Spell, and proceeded to scorch the pulp out of half of her seeds. Professor Burbage pretended not to notice, but Victoire saw him smirking as Fidelma trudged back to the bushel, grumbling under her breath and stinking of burnt garlic, for a fresh scoop of seeds.

By lunchtime, Victoire had barely a gram of seedpulp, and more nicked fingertips than she could shake a copper-bladed knife at. Kieron took ten minutes to Heal them all.

After lunch, Professor Chamberlain led her Muggle Studies class in a discussion of the first chapter of Horatio Fudge's memoir, _Reflections_. The son of a former Minister for Magic, Fudge had spent all of 1976 living among the Muggles of Toronto, strictly limiting his own use of magic and working as a crime reporter for the _Star_. He had befriended Wes DeLesseps of the Toronto Police Service and accompanied the detective in an investigation into a string of related deaths, inspiring DeLesseps to joke that Fudge had become the Watson to his Holmes.

Of course, only a few of the male students participated in the conversation. The rest were too busy appreciating Professor Chamberlain, who, while wearing perfectly plain robes and nearly no make-up at all, was clearly an attractive woman. The fact she was almost fifty had no deterrent effect on these boys whatsoever. If anything, it intrigued some of them more.

That evening, Victoire lent her notes to Owen and Allen (and, by extension, Edwin), since they'd been too captivated by Chamberlain's exotic gaze to pay any attention to what she was saying. While theyscrutinized her cramped handwriting, Victoire settled in to finish her History essay, summarizing as thoroughly as she could the sequence of events she had pieced together.

Grindelwald had met up with a dragon-trainer in the wizarding hamlet of Lothian Lake. He had murdered a centaur, one of the Colddrake's territorial enemies, and offered its body as a gift to the dragons. The Colddrakes had deliberated for weeks over whether to accept because doing so would indebt them to this stranger. Grindelwald had lost patience with their process and attempted to enslave the mind of a young Colddrake in order to use it against its colony. He only partially succeeded; the dragon mind was too complex for him to conquer. And when the drakes discovered his treachery, they retaliated by wiping Lothian Lake from the face of the Earth.

Grindlwald had fled the country then, leaving his own devotees to die in the slaughter. The drakes offered a hefty bounty for his head, and when the centaurs figured out exactly what had happened, they offered a competing bounty of their own, but neither was ever collected. Victoire padded out the essay with a summary of the more devastating applications of Colddrake venom, and then, to keep the essay nominally on topic, speculated freely as to Grindelwald's intentions.

By that point she had already exceeded the required length, and the common room had nearly emptied. She considered momentarily, then jotted a concluding paragraph to point out the coincidental timing of Grindelwald's trip to Canada. The Battleford Wizarding Exhibit had been robbed, according to an issue of the _Saskatoon Phoenix_, three weeks after Grindelwald had arrived and just days before he fled. Several artefacts made of adamantine had been taken. And according to _Magical Metallurgy_ – which, she did not mention, hadn't been written until 1939 – adamantine was one of the few substances capable of safely containing Colddrake venom.

Despite her mounting weariness, she read the essay over in full once more, and decided that it was a good essay. Perhaps not her best work, but well-researched and well-written. Good.

Professor Dawkins spent the rest of his classes that week explaining a torturous concept called Quantum Mechanics. Victoire struggled to make heads or tails of concepts like spacetime foam, wave-particle duality, and mirror symmetry. She had slightly more success making sense of bra-ket notations and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, with a bit of help from a few back issues of _the International Journal of Psiotic Studies_ that Dawkins supplied. Fermions, bosons, and tachyons seemed to her rather the sort of fantastical imaginings that Hecate's father might write about, and the entire concept of quantum superposition left her winded.

Dawkins closed out the discussion with the opinion that the modern attempt to merge magic and science was an amusingly useless endeavor. Science might indeed have something to say about magic, he admitted; magic followed rules, after all, and science was nothing if not an attempt to understand rules. But magic was inaccessible to Muggles, and since it was Muggles who had developed scientific methodology, magic would remain beyond the scope of science.

Still, the idea of so-called "quantum reconciliation" had, apparently, become quite popular among the new generation of witches and wizards in the United States. Dawkins smirked as he mused: "that's what happens when Muggle-borns suddenly flood the field of theoretics."

After dinner on Thursday evening, the rest of her Housemates returned to Ravenclaw Tower, listening to Edwin and Fidelma argued over whether Orion McDermid or Ginny Weasley had been the better Seeker. Victoire, instead, headed to the lower level of the Castle, passing the kitchens and weaving through the crowd clustered at the Hufflepuff common room entrance.

She rounded a corner, treading the softly lit corridor until she reached the end. A circular door as tall as Victoire stood there, looking like the lid of an enormous barrel. The first thought that occurred to her was that it was the entrance to a hobbit-hole, and she smiled to herself as she knocked against the wood. Because, she recalled, hobbit-holes meant comfort.

A moment later the wood creaked, and the door rotated slowly counterclockwise. It turned perhaps thirty degrees, thumped heavily, and swung inward just a crack. "Come in, come in," Professor Demeter Diggory beckoned hospitably, and Victoire pushed the door open further.

She stepped over the lip of the doorframe. If the door reminded her of hobbit-holes, then the interior of the office made her half expect Bilbo Baggins to emerge and offer her tea. The room had been hewn into the earth by the wand of Helga Hufflepuff just a few short months before King Harold and William of Normandy fought their historic battle at Senlac Hill.

The walls were paneled in ancient Scots Pinewood. The floor was laid with an intricate pattern of flagstones that somehow managed to look perfectly natural. There were no free-standing bookshelves, or even shelves on the wall. The ledges were depressed into the walls, paneled with darker wood and lined with many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore.

An ascetic seven-armed Dutch chandelier wrought in brass hovered above the center of the office, a glowing ball of light floating a few inches above each bobèche. The ceiling remained unadorned, a rough dome of soil supported by the invisible braces of Hufflepuff's enchantments. This was comfort. Alas, there were no hobbits to be found here this evening. Only Professor Diggory, sitting behind her desk with her immaculate chignon and her beauteous smile.

"Evening, Professor," Victoire said, crossing the office to the teacher's desk. She stopped between the two high-backed wooden chairs facing the professor, each fitted with a cushion of wheat-gold velour trimmed with black piping. Hufflepuff, all the way down to the upholstery.

"Indeed it is," Professor Diggory agreed, gesturing to the chairs. "Take your pick."

Victoire eased into the chair to her left, set her bookbag on the other. The teacher flashed a curious smile. "So," she began, leaning on her armrest, "you're interested in Animagy."

"Very," Victoire admitted. The teacher's expression became even more delighted; she was clearly energized at having a student so eager for her tutelage.

"Not surprising," the Professor said, and she smiled vaguely at a memory. "I recall you once tried to convince Mr. Lupin to teach you how to shapeshift when you were eight."

"I didn't really understand then that Ted's ability was hereditary," Victoire said with a wry smirk, then sighed at her own recollections. "I always envied what he could do."

"I can't say that no one noticed your interest in Mr. Lupin," Diggory said, and her smile took on a knowing lilt, "well before you developed…shall we say…an _interest_ in Mr. Lupin"

Victoire grinned, and felt a mild blush warming her face. She didn't bother to hide it. Her relationship with Ted was common knowledge, even if his Gram seemed to be plotting other arrangements for her grandson. But while she discussed him freely with her friends, it was quite another matter for an adult acknowledge it. As if that kind of recognition made it permanent.

They were kids, after all. _Relationships_ were the sorts of things that adults got mixed up in, and they required as much work as any NEWT-level Potions class. Whatever it was between Victoire and Ted – and they had, by unspoken agreement, never tried to talk about it – was unofficial and unrestrictive and undemanding. It was the antithesis of a _relationship_.

They had fun, but she was a student and he was an Auror. She had once won a Schoolwide chess contest; he had competed in a Triwizard Tournament. She might not see him for weeks while he was off keeping the world safe for wizardkind. Their lives overlapped nicely enough for the time being, but Victoire imagined that eventually that would no longer be the case.

She said none of these things to Professor Diggory. But in a moment, she realized that the teacher was watching her, reading her reactions. When Diggory saw that Victoire's attention had returned, she resumed, explaining: "Animagy is a deeply psychological art."

She sat forward, leaning on her desk. "For instance; I believe that you are right-handed?"

Victoire nodded.

Diggory gestured to her student then: "yet you sat in the seat to your left."

Victoire looked to the other seat and her bookbag. She hadn't given a moment's thought to which chair she took, much less how it might relate to which hand she used to write.

"It is a seemingly insignificant detail," Diggory admitted, "and yet quite rare. Most people tend to the side of their dominant hand. That you did not will almost surely have implications."

Victoire shifted in the chair, feeling overly aware of herself. She had been leaning on the rightside armrest, her left knee rested over her right. Her fingernails were painted in clear-coat. Neither of her ears were pierced. Her hair was twisted up into a hasty bun at the nape of her neck. These were facts that she never consciously considered, and she felt unsettled to think that such minutia might somehow reveal her secrets to anyone who knew how to read them.

"I trust," Diggory continued, "that Professor Tonks has taught you the Patronus Charm?"

Victoire swept aside her own thoughts. "January of sixth-year," she answered, thinking back to nine months prior. "She had us out in the Forbidden Forest at one o'clock in the morning for two weeks. She didn't hold classes in the Castle again until everyone succeeded."

"That does sound like the sort of thing she would do," the Professor smirked. "If you don't mind my asking: what form did yours take?"

Victoire did not mind her asking. "A wolf."

"Ah," Professor Diggory smiled, seemingly pleased with the answer. "Again, not surprising. The Patronus is a Charm that reflects what makes one feel safe and protected." She leaned back in her seat. "A wolf Patronus is quite reasonable, given your relationship with Mr. Lupin."

Victoire cocked an eyebrow involuntarily at the teacher's choice of words, but Professor Diggory either did not notice, or did not acknowledge that she did. She felt a certain annoyance at the implication that her Patronus was a reflection of whatever it was between her and Ted.

"If you don't mind my disagreeing, Professor," Victoire said; Diggory looked momentarily surprised, then motioning for her to continue. "I doubt my Patronus is related to Ted."

Diggory gave her a curios look. "Why is that?"

"Because the memory I used to conjure it didn't involve him." Victoire thought back to that night in the Forest all those months ago, a week-and-a-half into Tonks' lesson. "I tried to use the memory of our first kiss, but it wasn't quite powerful enough." Only four of them had failed to produce a Patronus by that point, and Victoire had been exhausted and freezing as she faced a vicious gang of furious erklings. "I had to figure out something else to use."

"What proved effective?" Diggory asked, genuinely interested, then smiled apologetically. "Again: only if you don't mind my asking."

Victoire shook her head. "On my eighth birthday, my father took me to my first Aerocrosse game. The Dorning Daemons were playing in London. Dad went to school with the Daemons captain, Góntia Grimwood, so he got us box-seats, and after the game, Grimwood took me up on an Aethonan over the pitch." Victoire didn't realize how brilliantly she was smiling.

"It was the most amazing experience, but what I remember more clearly than anything was the look on my father's face when we landed. How happy he was to see how happy I was."

Victoire saw that Diggory was watching her with a smile of her own, and explained: "That was the memory that worked. And my Patronus was a wolf because I learned about my dad's battle with Greyback long before Ted experienced his struggles with Lycanthropic Syndrome." Victoire straightened her back against the seat, crossed her arms over her chest.

Diggory met her student's eyes through her explanation, and when Victoire stopped, the Professor drew a slow breath. "That," she said, and her beauteous, delighted smile returned to her lips, "is exactly the kind of keen introspection that makes a successful Animagus."

Victoire watched the Professor for signs of sarcasm, and found none. In another moment, Diggory stood and turned to the bookshelves in the wall behind her desk, scanning the rows of volumes as she spoke. "The matter of one's Patronus is obliquely related to the form that an Animagus takes." She found the book she wanted, sliding it free and turning back to Victoire.

"For most mages, the two are the same, implying that they somehow spring from the same realm of the subconscious." Diggory handed the book across the desk to her student. Victoire took it, saw that it was an old copy of the _Collins Field Guide to the Mammals of Britain_.

"Of course," Diggory added with a smirk, "most witches and wizard also tend to the side of their dominant hand."


	8. Fury in the Sky

Quidditch tryouts the following week were particularly brutal.

Edwin posted a notice on Friday evening announcing the schedule. Chasers and Beaters on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday; Keepers on Thursday; Seekers on Friday. The squad had three vacancies, what with Warwick Bell, Simon Westing, and Alexander Flint graduating. So Edwin was looking for a Chaser, a Beater, and a Keeper to round out his team.

Every morning that week, he had players out on the pitch from five o'clock until breakfast. Victoire ventured out each morning despite a persistent rain that had settled over the valley. She had overnight patrolling duties for the week, so she was awake at sunrise anyway, and she found it quite easy to sneak off for a few hours of sleep over lunch. She watched from the shelter of an Umbrella Charm as Edwin ran his candidates through a grueling battery of drills made ever more exhausting by thrashing winds and driving showers. She had no aspirations of playing herself, but she had agreed to serve as commentator after Chris Blotts had graduated.

On Tuesday morning, three second-years arrived at the locker room at four past the hour.

"Tryouts are closed," Edwin snapped without looking at them and went back to addressing the rest of his group. The latecomers stared at him like they thought he was joking. So Edwin turned to them, raised his voice, and annunciated while signaling in British Sign Language: "I am not letting anyone on this team that cannot get their idle arse to the pitch on time."

On Wednesday, a fourth-year girl showed up to try out for the Keeper's position. Edwin snapped up the nearest item with printing on it, which happened to be the sports-page of that day's _Daily Prophet_, and waved it in front of the girl. "What's this say?"

She gave him a peculiar look, then glanced to the newspaper and read the headline off the top of the page: "_Brussels Prepares for Confederation Invitational_."

Edwin feigned surprise. "So you _can_ read?"

"Yes," the girl said, affronted, "of course I can bloody well read."

"Then surely," Edwin answered, his voice drenched in patronizing sarcasm, "you know that tryouts for the Keeper's position are being held on Thursday morning, oh-five-hundred."

A flash of embarrassment shot through the girl's expression. She glanced around the locker room to find almost a dozen teenagers looking uncomfortably between her and Edwin.

"Don't bother, though," he told her dismissively. "Position's filled."

The girl left in an indignant huff. Edwin led his potential teammates out onto the muddy pitch, and Victoire followed loosely beside him. "So who got the Keeper's job?"

"Don't know yet," Edwin laughed gruffly, and began barking orders at the players.

Victoire had been intrigued when Scorpius Malfoy arrived at the pitch at quarter-to-five on Monday morning, a weathered Derecho broom propped against his shoulder. She was more than a bit impressed when, by Wednesday, the first-year had outlasted most of his elder competition. Edwin gave Malfoy no special treatment. The captain ran some of his most advanced maneuvers against the kid. He deliberately threw passes wide and short and high. He viciously criticized every mistake, which were few, minor, and far between. Malfoy never complained once.

Edwin liked the kid. He moved with a sureness that spoke of years on the broom, and he handled the Quaffle with dexterity that shamed his competition. Perhaps most importantly, he displayed an almost supernatural awareness of his surroundings; of the movements of his own teammates as well as the opposition; of the trajectories of every ball in play.

Malfoy had even drawn his own knot of spectators. Feronia Knight, Calliope Anderson, and Valentine Sinclair huddled in the stands half-an-hour before breakfast on Wednesday. Victoire took pity on them by extending her Umbrella over them as they watched their classmate execute a daring catch. He slung himself off his broom, dropping nearly twenty feet with it, catching the Quaffle left-handed, and getting the broom back under himself before slamming into the mud.

"Way to go, Sam!" Anderson shrieked over the rain.

Victoire looked to the girl with a small grin. "Sam?"

"His initials," Sinclair explained without dragging her eyes away from the pitch.

"We tried 'Scorpy'," Knight added, "but he laughed so hard he fell off his seat."

Victoire found such a reaction perfectly reasonable.

The battle for the Keeper's spot raged through breakfast on Thursday. Woodrow Twycross came out, and Tim West and Jack Upchurch who were both third-years. Sixth-year Ulysses Kyd insisted that everyone else could head back to the Castle now that he, the son of Kestrals Keeper William Kyd, had arrived. Naomi Pollock was the only girl who tried out for the position, and her little sister braved the rain to cheer her. Mordecai Ford came out as well, in what Victoire learned was the other half of a dare he had made with Malfoy, and was thoroughly trounced in front of the posts. Edwin brought back three of his most promising Chasers from earlier in the week – including Malfoy, the fifth-year Ray Freemantle, and third-year Branwen Yates – and ran a devastating four-man offense that rapidly narrowed the field of aspirants.

The fourth-year girl from Wednesday morning did not return.

On Thursday evening, Victoire met Professor Diggory in her office again. They discussed the _Collins Field Guide_ briefly; Victoire admitted that while the articles on wolves and wildcats had interested her, they hadn't spoken to her in a personal way. Diggory just smiled and traded the book for one on reptiles, reassuring her student that the process of finding one's inner animal form is a protracted and imprecise one. Simply reading about various species, Diggory admitted, might not be enough to give Victoire an indication of her Animagus form.

They spent the rest of the evening reviewing how to prepare a blend of dried whispergrass with a single powdered petal of the Trailing Iceplant. The mixture could then be sprinkled over smoldering coals, releasing an incense known to induce a waking dream-state. The process had been used by witches and wizards to gain greater insight into their own natures for millennia.

Edwin put off Seeker tryouts until Friday morning, and word spread that he was looking to replace Fidelma despite the fact she'd played the position since fourth year. When Desdemona voiced her disbelief over lunch on Thursday, Fidelma just shrugged and went on reading an issue of _Seekers' Weekly_. She seemed to take the rumors in stride, except that she studiously ignored Edwin the entire week, and flatly refused to discuss Quidditch with anyone.

All of which was why Victoire nearly expected an altercation in the locker room on Friday. At oh-five-hundred, Edwin opened the tryout with his usual concise preamble: "nothing matters but how well you serve the team, and only the best will make my roster. I don't care what you did yesterday, and I don't what you do tomorrow. You get three hours. Prove yourself."

Edwin should have walked out of the locker room then, onto the pitch with the group of teenagers scurrying after him. But he didn't. And after four seconds of silence, Fidelma stood up from the middle of that group of her potential replacements. She looked them over with pity and disdain and a certain disbelief, and Edwin watched her do it without saying a word.

"You came here today to take my job," she said. Her tone was perfectly calm, and her eyes were blazing. "I take that very personally. And I am going to crush every one of you." Victoire watched her uneasily, waiting for the fuse to burn out and the explosion to detonate, but Fidelma continued, "tomorrow I probably won't recognize any of you in the hall. But suffer no delusions: not a single one of you stands a snowball's chance in Hell of making this team."

And she walked out of the locker room. Edwin watched her, then looked back to the dozen students who didn't look so sure of themselves anymore. Then he followed Fidelma outside, and Victoire saw a small grin tug at the corner of his mouth as he headed through the archway.

The rain came down harder that morning than it had all week. Thunder rocked the valley.

"Should we be holding tryouts under these conditions?" a fifth-year asked.

Fidelma looked up at the furious skies without shielding her face. "We play in worse."

Everyone pulled on protective goggles, except for Fidelma. She, somehow, seemed perfectly at ease in the midst of the raging storms. Edwin dug into his robes and found a drawstring pouch containing a Snitch, which he proceeded to shrink to a third of its already miniscule size. He set the winged ball loose, counted down a ten-second headstart, and ordered a fourth-year to bring it back. The kid blanched, drew a deep breath, and took off on his broom. Nineteen minutes later, he landed with a muddy thump and stomped off the pitch without even needing to be told.

The next candidate didn't even last that long. He fought the vicious windshears whipping across the field for twelve minutes before giving up the chase and storming back into the locker room, hurling his goggles into the mud and muttering hotly about "unreasonable disadvantages." Tabitha Spruce tried next and fared moderately better, darting and wearing for more than half-an-hour without ever losing sight of the snitch. The ball just proved too fast and nimble for her, and when she lost control and nearly crashed into a goal hoop, Edwin whistled her in.

A few minutes later, a livid bolt of lightning split the sky and struck the steel finial on top of the commentator's tower. Three of the remaining teenagers walked off the field without a word.

The only other potential Seeker to pose a serious threat was the second-year Gabriel Watson. At barely five-foot tall and 120 pounds soaking wet (as he was today), he was ideally built for the task, and his single-minded focus could not be broken. He pursued the Snitch relentlessly for more than an hour and actually came within a dozen meters of catching it, until a fierce squall hurtled him into the grandstands, shattering the handle of his broom. Edwin let the kid continue on a school-broom, but Watson just didn't have the same command on an unfamiliar model.

With just twenty minutes left until breakfast, only Fidelma remained. Edwin whistled her up, and she quite serenely mounted her broom, coasting almost lazily around the periphery of the pitch. She completed three-quarters of a circuit before pulling up at the nearest set of goalposts. Fidelma proceeded to hover just behind the hoops for six minutes, exerting only enough effort to maintain her balance as she was jostled by the winds and battered by the downpour.

Some of the competition had retired to the stands to watch after their own failed attempts, and Victoire heard increasing murmurs as Fidelma remained aloft and immobile, surveying the murky arena. Someone behind Victoire made a snide remark about the veteran losing her nerve. Victoire bristled, but said nothing. She knew that Fidelma's skill would speak for itself.

Then lightning flashed. Fidelma didn't even flinch. She was off like a shot, leaving a vortex of wake turbulence through the rain, a Fury in the sky. She veered sharply, went into a steep climb, then banked hard and cut a tight arc right over the stands where Victoire sat.

It was all over in less than thirty seconds. Fidelma stretched to full extension over the handle of her mount, bent forward for one more explosion of speed, then quickly tucked her arm back in at her midsection. She turned abruptly, gliding back to the end of the pitch were Edwin stood waiting. A dozen feet out and still four feet off the ground, she dismounted her broom, landing hard and casting up a filthy spray of mud and rainwater. She slapped the Snitch into Edwin's hand, looked over the spectators with a defiant glare, and trudged back into the locker room.

Edwin posted the final roster hung by the end of dinner on Friday. Desdemona, Hecate, Victoire, and Fidelma returned to the common room to find a swarm of two-dozen Ravenclaws all jostling for a view. Fidelma made no attempt to penetrate the crowd, instead taking over an entire loveseat and rereading her heavily bookmarked copy of _a Snitch in Hand_.

Victoire, on the other hand, fought her way to the front of the group. She had spotted the Pollock sisters in animated conversation with a group of fourth-years near the fireplace. And to one side of the announcement board, she also saw Sinclair, Knight, Malfoy, Anderson and Ford chattering delightedly with a pack of fellow first-years. The vast majority of the kids Victoire passed exhibited different stages of dejection, which was to be expected. Only three spots had been vacant, and no new prospect had sufficiently outplayed those returning from last year.

So Victoire wasn't surprised find four of last year's players back on the roster. Evander Carr would be helping Nigella Sativa batter the Bludgers, while Naomi Pollock would be patrolling the goalposts in Alexander Flint's stead. Scorpius Malfoy – _Sam_, Victoire reminded herself – had managed to take the open Chaser's spot, joining Branwen Yates and Edwin himself. Both Gabriel Watson and Tabitha Spruce had earned spots as Reserves, along with five other players that did not include Ulysses Kyd. And returning to snatch the Snitch was Fidelma Thackery.

"Was there any doubt?" she asked when Victoire relayed the news. She didn't look up from her book, but Victoire saw a triumphant grin flash across the girl's face.


	9. The Other Vicky

The rain did not abate as Friday evening wore on.

By quarter of ten, Fidelma and Edwin were arguing heartily again, over whether women or men, in general, made for better Seekers. In a rare turn of events, the two actually agreed, and they defended their mutual opinion against Twycross, Aspinwall, Kyd, and Freemantle.

Victoire was glad to see that friendship mended, but quietly exited the discussion when the longcase clock near the door struck ten. She hiked up to her dorm, measured out seven drams of aural amplifying drops – about seven hours' worth – into a tumbler of Invigoration Draught, and knocked the drink back in one go. Then she headed down into the Castle to make her rounds.

Tybalt wandered along with Victoire as she patrolled the third floor. He accompanied her as far as the vaulted doors to the courtyard at the base of the Clock Tower, and remained inside the foyer as she put up another Umbrella Charm and trekked out into the storm. The showers had lightened only slightly. Victoire didn't really expect to find anyone outside the Castle in these conditions, but she dutifully, if cursorily, inspected the courtyard, then walked the length of the Covered Bridge all the way to the Stone Circle at the far side of the gorge before turning back.

As she hiked the Bridge back to the school, she couldn't help appreciating the view. In this hellacious weather, the hills to the west of Hogwarts were nearly indistinct smudges; only the ominous peak of the Dragon's Tooth stood out against the sky. Victoire paused on the Bridge, propping herself against the railing to witness the breathtaking panorama, and wondering, not for the first time, at the night's mysterious allure. She could believe in this moment that she was the only human being on Earth, in a time before Time had begun eroding the world.

She shook her head, and laughed at her own wistfulness. Tybalt greeted her at the Clock Tower by nuzzling the top of his head against her shin. Victoire cast a Drying Charm on her shoes, scratched the cat's ears, and the two of them treaded the quiet halls of the third floor.

Shortly after midnight, she made another round, stopping off this time at the Trophy Room. Before she even reached the door, her augmented hearing picked up a soft gasp and light giggle, then a husky groan followed by a male's heavy breathing. Victoire sighed, drew her wand, and quietly tested the door. Firmly fastened. That was fine with her; she banged her fist against the wood a couple of times, then called out, "Prefect. Open the door."

One participant shushed the other, and the girl swore. Under a hurried shuffling and the rustling of clothes, Victoire heard her whisper: "I _told_ you you were being too loud."

"Your fault," the boy answered. Even through the door, Victoire could hear him grinning.

The girl giggled again, and then footsteps approached the other side of the door. Victoire stepped back as it swung open, and wasn't even mildly surprised when Fidelma exited with Theodore Pope close behind her, both of them still looking disheveled and a bit out of breath. Fidelma grinned wickedly when she saw Victoire, and she closed the door behind her.

"As you can see, Miss Thackery," Theo said, smoothing his tie, "contrary to popular belief, several Slytherins have, in fact, been granted the Special Services Award over the years."

Fidelma stared at him for a second, then nodded. "Seems I stand corrected."

"Well, then," Theo nodded back; "good evening to you both." And he headed off down the hall toward the far stairwell that led down to the dungeons and the Slytherin dormitories.

Fidelma watched him go, then said to Victoire in an undertone: "If you wanted to join in, you should have let me know ahead of time."

"Incorrigible," Victoire chided with a laugh. "You're lucky it was me that found you."

"Why do you think we chose a room on the third floor?" Fidelma said through a grin.

Victoire shook her head. "You know if I catch you out again, I'm docking points."

"Fair enough," Fidelma agreed, and started toward the opposite end of the corridor.

"_Au fait_," Victoire caught her with a smirk, "did I hear you _giggling_?"

Fidelma paused in front of a tapestry depicting Atymnius' final tragic stand at the Battle of Karamenderes. She fixed Victoire with a perfectly serious look: "absolutely not."

"Ah," Victoire said, cracking another grin. "Probably just imagining things, then."

Fidelma cocked an eyebrow, but smiled back. "Must be." Then she was gone through an archway into a stairwell that led to a corridor that would take her back to Ravenclaw Tower.

Once Fidelma was gone, Victoire laughed to herself. She gave her roommate far too much latitude, and they both knew it. But she couldn't very well start cracking down on the girl now, considering that she'd been letting her gallivant around the School after-hours since early in their fifth-year. If she caught Fidelma out again, she would almost certainly not dock points.

Victoire headed into the Trophy Room to make sure that Fidelma and Theo hadn't disturbed anything too terribly. She rounded the House Cup, standing on a seven-sided stone base in the center of the room; each granite face was engraved with the winning Houses of every year since the points-system had been instated. She passed one wall bedecked with countless plaques and shields, then looked over the array of Medals of Magical Merit going back two hundred years.

She paused at the massive self-spindling scroll that listed the names of every Head Girl and Boy. The parchment spooled on its own from one rod to the other, back or forth, when asked for a particular year. Whoever viewed it last had left it on the first decade of the new millennium, when kids named Reginald Donne and Milo Newsome had served as Head Boys. Victoire grinned when she saw, at the top of the section of scroll, her Aunt Ginny listed as Head Girl in 1999-2000, having elected to repeat her sixth year and become a supersenior.

That was the school-year that her aunt had brought the Triwizard Cup back to Hogwarts. Victoire continued on to the alcove where the now empty glass case stood. The Cup had stayed at the School for five years before Beauxbatons had reclaimed it. It hadn't returned since. She ran her fingers across the wooden cylinder at the front of the vacant case, then spun it.

The cylinder was no larger around than a hefty rolling pin. Yet the dates it showed rolled farther and farther forward as she turned it, until she reached the most recent competitors at the end of the list. The 2014-2015 Tournament had been held in Marseilles, France, and here the name of each champion was forever burned into the wood: Delphine Dumas, Edward Lupin, and Ingrid Schiffer. It had been a close contest. Ingrid had beaten Ted by the narrowest margin.

Victoire finished her circuit of the room, passing a wall lined with commemoratory banners. She spared one glance into the Armor Gallery, found everything in order, and headed back out into the corridor. She detoured quickly back outside again, crossing the Suspension Bridge under an Umbrella charm to the border of the Training Grounds. The rain hammered harder again, but she could feel that the storm was in its final throes. The Lake might rise by three feet, but the downpour would be over by sunrise. Spotting no one, she headed back inside.

After another cursory circuit of the convoluted third floor hallways, Victoire settled into an alcove that afforded her an unobstructed view of the long curving main corridor. She sat on a stone ledge by a vaulted window, propped Professor Diggory's book of British reptiles against her knees, and read up on the diet of the _Vipera berus_. Rain splattered its rage against the glass beside her, and Tybalt curled up under her knees. She smiled to herself as she considered how delighted Brendon would be if her Animagus form turned out to be a snake.

Five minutes later she paged forward to the far less fearsome _Natrix natrix_. "What kind of animal am I supposed to be, Tyb?" she sighed, glancing through the Grass Snake's habitat.

Tybalt glanced up at her, yawned, stretched, and tucked his nose back into his paws.

Victoire alternated between reading and making rounds until almost three o'clock in the morning. Her patrol would end at dawn, when she'd hike back up to her dormitory and sleep until lunch. Until then, Victoire walked the same routes, monitored the same halls, and checked into the same rooms, each time finding the very same nothing quite unbothered. By three-thirty, she fully expected Fidelma and Theo's tryst to be the height of excitement for her night.

Which was why the noise from the main classroom hall caught her off guard. Between the howling of the wind, the snoring of portraits, and the grinding stones of the ever-shifting Grand Staircase, Victoire wasn't even sure what she'd heard. She paused in the middle of the corridor, listening intently to the augmented sounds eddying around her. Then she heard the unmistakable peal of glass shattering, and a heavy thump like a sack of wet laundry hitting the floor.

She turned back to the near end of the hall and started testing doors, moving deliberately from one to the next, side to side across the corridor. Each room was empty until she reached the Defence classroom and found the door locked. Victoire banged on the wood. "Prefect. Open the door." She received no answer. She leaned close, heard nothing, and banged again.

"Whoever's in this classroom needs to open this — "

She heard a gagging retch, very faintly, and decided to forego courtesy. She stepped back, pointed her wand at the door hand, and said "_Alohomora_." She tried the door again, but found it still tightly secured. Victoire aimed her wand again, tried "_Effringo_." Something creaked inside the door and she pushed again, but again it refused to budge.

That worried Victoire. Only a particularly powerful Locking Spell would resist an _effringo_ counterspell. Whoever was in this room clearly did not want to be interrupted. Victoire backed another step away, focused her energies, flicked her wand sharply and snapped "_Bombardo!_"

The door obediently tore itself off its hinges. Jagged fragments of ancient oak collapsed across the classroom. Incredibly, the plank of wood surrounding the lock remained attached to the door frame. Victoire ducked through the swirling dust; her vision adjusted in a moment to the murky dimness. She spotted a dark heap crumpled halfway under a desk close to the door, and shards of thick glass that glittered in a puddle of dark liquid beside the heap.

She crossed to that dark form in two steps, stooped over it, rolled it to find a girl's clammy face. Victoire didn't recognize Victoria Hobbes immediately, but then the girl's eyes fluttered opened. She was breathing, barely, pale and sweating profusely. Her lips were dry and cracked, crusted at the corners. She locked onto Victoire's eyes for a moment, choked out what sounded like "_…forced…them…_" Then she gagged on her own voice, and lost consciousness.

"No you don't," Victoire said, more for her own benefit, as she hauled Hobbes over onto her back. She flicked her wand to cast a quick _reparo_ charm over the glass fragments; they rapidly reconfigured themselves back into a long-necked wine bottle. She hastily siphoned some of the liquid off the floor, returned it to the bottle, then sniffed at the opening. The pungent smell of bilderberry wine made her eyes water, but she detected another much nastier, somehow coppery stench lurking beneath the alcohol. Victoire spotted the cork under a nearby desk, snapped it, plugged the bottle and tucked the neck of it into her belt to secure it.

Then she turned her wand on the ashen Hobbes, and considered briefly. There was way to tell what the girl had ingested or how long it had been in her system, so Victoire settled for the first incantation that came to mind. She heaved Hobbes onto her side, and said, "_Purgeais_."

The mess was incredible. Hobbes must have finished off the entire bottle of wine, then used a Replenishing Charm and finished it off again. The girl didn't wake, but she kept on breathing, no matter how faint and irregular. Victoire fought the awful smell for two horrible seconds, then wrestled to get Hobbes' limp into her arms. The girl nearly tumbled over twice, but Victoire at last managed to get one arm under her shoulders and the other under her knees.

Driven by a fresh wave of adrenaline, Victoire carted Hobbes out of the classroom, lurching down the corridor toward the hospital wing. She was silently grateful that the hospital, too, was on the third floor, and she reached the outer vestibule in a matter of minutes. She was panting by then under the girls' weight, and she was nearly out of breath when she burst into the infirmary.

Madam Nethersole was checking on one of the two students already laid up in beds when Victoire stumbled in. The unflappable Healer glanced at the new arrivals without a trace of surprise as she finished with her current patient. Then she strode between the rows of beds as Victoire spent the last of her energy reserves dropping Hobbes onto the nearest cot.

She slumped immediately back against the wall beside the bed as the Healer reached them. Madam Nethersole leaned over Hobbes' face, ignoring the fetid stink of her sickness, and pulled open one eye and then the other. Victoire caught most of her breath in a few gasps, propping her palms against her knees. "Found her in a classroom," she explained, then pulled the bottle loose and handed it over to the Healer. "With this."

Nethersole took the bottle, gave it a perfunctory look, and set it on the table next to the bed. "It's bilderberry wine," Victoire continued as Nethersole opened the top drawer of the table and rummaged through it quickly, "but there's something else in it." The Healer closed the drawer, opened the next one down. "It smelled like copper."

The Healer looked at her then, her face impassive. "Like copper. You're sure?"

Victoire nodded.

Nethersole closed the second drawer and skipped straight to the bottom drawer. There she found an ampoule the size of her little finger filled with a clear liquid. "Hold her mouth open," Nethersole instructed Victoire without looking at her, and Victoire obeyed despite her revulsion. The Healer cracked open the ampoule and emptied the contents down Hobbes' throat. The unconscious girl retched on the potion, but Nethersole promptly held her mouth closed.

Hobbes thrashed for a few seconds, then swallowed the liquid and became passive again. Victoire heard the girl's breathing, still faint and labored, but clear enough even under the rain.

"I cast a Vomiting Hex on her," Victoire confessed. She didn't look away from Hobbes. "I made her throw up."

Nethersole pulled open Hobbes' right eye again, and seemed satisfied.

"Then you probably saved her life."


	10. Curiouser and Curiouser

Victoire fell asleep in one of the hard wooden chairs in the infirmary.

She dreamed of Hogwarts Lake again. In the pale light of the blue hour just before dawn, she sat in her drifting rowboat and listened to the steady cadence of the rain. The downpour had worked its way into her dream, but that didn't bother her. It was dream-rain, after all: soft and soothing, like a warm bath. Like everything about this dream, it was cause for comfort.

Tybalt had curled into the prow of the boat. Victoire heard the jagged rumble of his snoring under the patter of rain against the Lake. His whiskers twitched. Victoire smiled, remembered another line of verse – _all that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream_. Perhaps her entire life at Shell Cottage, at the Burrow, at Hogwarts was just a dream in Tybalt's feline mind.

She glanced across the Lake, through the showers. She could make out the dark shapes of a handful of her fellow drifters in the distance. Only this time, Victoire saw that one of those boats was closer than the others. Closer than any had ever been in all the years she'd had this dream. It was so close that she could see, now that she really concentrated, the outline of a figure sitting in the center. It leaned forward, gripping both sides of the boat. Victoire would have bet that she could hit that figure with a gobstone from here if she put her shoulder into it.

It was certainly within yelling distance. So she shouldn't have been surprised to hear a boy's voice through the rain, faint and watery, calling out: "Ill angels haunt this lonely route!"

But she gasped as the sound broke around her like a wave, carrying the smell of saltwater and honeysuckle. And in that brief instant, she blinked against dazzling sunlight, her neck and back stiff from the awkwardness of sleeping in a chair. She was awake again, in the infirmary. It was morning. The storm had finally blown itself out, leaving the sky bleached.

Victoire pushed herself forward in the chair, kneading the kinks out of her muscles. Hobbes slept on the bed a few feet away, a damp towel over her forehead. She was breathing normally again, though little of her color had returned. Madam Nethersole (or perhaps Healer Bell) had cleaned the girl up and changed out of her filthy school robes into a plain white shirt.

Hobbes grunted. Then she was quiet again. Victoire yawned and started to stand when she heard a woman's voice. "Jeremiah," Nethersole said in the outer vestibule: "quick work."

The aural amplifying potion hadn't quite worn off yet. When Professor Burbage answered in a private undertone, he sounded to Victoire as if he were standing next to her. "Certainly."

"What did you find?" the nurse asked him.

Victoire spotted one of the students from the previous night, fast asleep in a bed across the room. The other student had been released. She edged closer to the door, acutely aware that this was none of her business. But she had saved Hobbes' life, as Madam Nethersole had so astutely pointed out. And she had stepped in vomit. That was reason enough for her.

"_Conium maculatum_," Professor Burbage said. "Poison hemlock. Quite concetrated."

Madam Nethersole didn't answer. Victoire stood motionless. Hemlock was a carefully controlled substance. Only a handful of merchants were licensed to deal the material..

"Thank you," Madam Nethersole said outside.

Professor Burbage answered: "Keep an eye on that girl."

"Absolutely," Nethersole agreed. A moment later, Victoire heard Professor Burbage's steps retreating out of the vestibule and down the hall. She started out the doorway herself, but nearly collided with Madam Nethersole returning to the infirmary. The nurse carried a small squared bottle half-filled with a liquid the color of over-steeped tea. Her expression was grim.

"Ah, Miss Weasley," Nethersole said. She nimbly avoided Victoire and rounded Hobbes' bed. The nurse either didn't realize that Victoire had been eavesdropping, or she didn't care.

"My patrol ends at five," Victoire said, yawning again. Her neck tightened.

Madam Nethersole uncorked the bottle in her hand and bent over Hobbes. "It's six-thirty." She set the rim to the girl's lips, tipped it enough to start a slow flow. The potion trickled into Hobbes' mouth; the girl swallowed without waking. In ten seconds, the bottle was empty.

"Go get some decent sleep." The nurse looked back to Victoire then, and smiled faintly. "You've already far done more than anyone could have asked."

Victoire looked over Hobbes again. She might have imagined it, but the girl didn't seem quite as pale anymore. She looked back to the nurse, nodded. "She'll be okay?"

"That," Nethersole said, her smile fading, "will depend."

Rather than hiking back to her dormitory and getting some decent sleep, Victoire headed to the Great Hall for breakfast. She had slept for a few hours already, even if it was uncomfortable sleep, and her mind was moving too rapidly to put it to bed yet. Maybe after breakfast.

Invigoration Draughts always left Victoire famished. This morning, she piled a plate with eggs, bacon, sausage, toast, two croissants, and more bacon. She poured a cup of Valerian tea, and breathed in the sweet steam curling off its surface. _Ill angels haunt this lonely route_, the boy on the Lake had called out to her from the depths of a dream. Curiouser and curiouser. The tea made her think of the bottle that Professor Burbage had given to Madam Nethersole.

Perhaps Hobbes was the ill angel. It made a strange kind of sense. She'd have to borrow one of Desdemona's many books on dream interpretation.

Victoire raised the cup to her lips, sipped the tea. That was when she saw Hecate sitting across the table from her, watching her wordlessly. She grinned. "It's not polite to stare."

"Fidelma told me you caught her and Theo in the Trophy Room last night," Hecate said.

Victoire set down her tea and started into the eggs. "She let me catch her."

"That's how she told it, too," Hecate nodded.

Victoire laughed to herself. "That's half the fun, for her, I think." She swallowed a heap of eggs, bit a croissant in half, and knocked back the rest of her tea. "Getting caught."

"Getting caught by you, maybe," Hecate amended, and smirked. Victoire laughed again, this time in part because Hecate was so close to the mark. She had never told anyone what had happened between herself and Fidelma on that Saturday in October of fifth-year. As far as she knew, neither had Fidelma. But Hecate had always had a peculiar talent for stumbling upon the truth entirely by accident. Victoire just smirked back as she refilled her tea. "Maybe."

Hecate reached across the table, picked out a cheese Danish, took a bite. "You didn't come back to the dorm after your patrol." Here was another of Hecate's peculiar talents: turning an observation of fact into a question. She chewed on her Danish as she watched Victoire.

"Spent the morning at the infirmary," Victoire answered around a mouthful of food.

Hecate's eyes went wide, and she bent toward the table. "What happened?"

"Nothing to me," Victoire clarified quickly. She finished the last of her toast, washed it down with another swig of tea. "I took someone in. Wound up falling asleep in a chair."

"You were the one that found the other Vicky?" Hecate said, shaking her head.

Victoire smirked again, in spite of herself. Only her dormmates still called Hobbes _the other Vicky_ anymore. "Word getting around already?"

"Gilbert Grant was up there overnight," Hecate explained. Victoire knew Grant only as a friend of her cousin James. "Burned himself up pretty good brewing Amortentia."

That gave Victoire pause. "Isn't that a little beyond a fourth-year?"

"Probably why he botched it," Hecate said with a shrug.

As Victoire finished off the last of her sausage, a fluttering kicked up overhead. "Take cover," Hecate said as the battalion of morning owls flooded into the Hall through the upper windows. Victoire glanced up and spotted her own pygmy owl, and spotted Hecate's larger eagle owl nearby. The pair dipped and circled each other, weaving through the airborne traffic. Then they descended in a rush toward the Ravenclaw table, the nimble pygmy owl leading the way.

Victoire moved her plate in time for Nimueh to touch down on the tabletop, a folded piece of parchment tied to one leg with a thin bit of ribbon. Victoire removed the parchment as the owl snatched the last strip of bacon off her plate and took off with it. Corwin didn't bother to land. He coasted over Hecate's head, dropping the envelope from his talons and circling back up with a parting screech. Nimueh shot off toward the high windows, and Corwin gave chase.

Hecate flipped her envelope as she finished her Danish and wiped the crumbs on her sleeve. Victoire unfolded her parchment, which bore the delicate script of her mother's weekly letters. But she lost interest in the goings-on at Shell Cottage when she saw Hecate break out in a giddy smile. The girl tore open her envelope, and found a sheet of printed text.

Victoire leaned forward. At the bottom of the page, she spotted the initials ACBIII. She grinned. "A letter from your American boy?"

"It is," Hecate crowed. She scanned quickly through the letter, and near the end, her smile broadened further. "He got invited to the Dueling Championship in Brussels."

"Who got invited to Brussels?" Fidelma asked as she heaved herself down on the bench next to Victoire. She yawned, filled a mug with coffee, emptied the entire cup down her gullet.

"_Drew_," Victoire told her, drawing out the syllable of the name, grinning.

Fidelma rolled her eyes, mumbled: "bloody Americans."

"Hey!" Hecate chided with a laugh. She snatched up a strip of bacon, flung it at Fidelma.

Thackery caught it on the fly, popped it into her mouth. "What news from Chez Weasley?"

Victoire shook her letter open, skimmed it. "Same old," she said, glossing over her brother's latest antics. "Roland apparently transfigured a couple of gnomes to give them pixie wings and had them racing around the dining room." Fidelma and Hecate both burst out laughing at that, and Victoire couldn't help smiling at the image that came to mind. She continued on: "Dad got a curse-breaking assignment out at Tintagel Castle, third weekend in October."

"Lord love a duck," Fidelma scoffed. "He does know that Morgana laid those enchantments herself, right?"

"He got a N.E.W.T. in the History of Magic," Victoire said reasonably. "So I would hazard a guess that, yes, he knows." She read on to the final lines, then looked up to Hecate. "And my Aunt Gabby apparently also received a summons to the Confederation Invitational. So — "

"Hey," Desdemona called from further down the table. She hurried up the aisle, her copy of _Futhorc for Simpletons_ tucked under her arm. Fidelma called back: "Hay is for horses."

Desdemona flashed a sarcastic look as she dropped next to Hecate. "Did you hear the other Vicky wound up in the infirmary last night?"

After breakfast, Hecate and Desdemona headed for the Library to get their respective homework assignments started, while Fidelma struck out on her Saturday morning 20K across campus.

Victoire returned to Ravenclaw Tower, and slept until lunch. Not even Tybalt's playful pestering woke her. She dreamed in fitful, disjointed images. She saw her cousin Carina playing Aerocrosse on a Canadian Colddrake while wearing a Dorning Daemons jersey. She saw Drew Benson riding a Harley Davidson Sportster over the Humber Bridge, which was odd because she had no idea what Drew Benson looked like. She saw Aunt Ginny dancing and laughing at Uncle George and Aunt Verity's wedding, wearing a copal pendant on a thin brass chain.

And she saw the Quidditch pitch, except that it wasn't a Quidditch pitch. It was a massive chessboard. Live people stood on various square patches of grass. One side wore formal robes of Crimson; the other wore robes of White. Each player waited, wand at the ready. Ted Lupin, dressed in scarlet, sat on the back of a shaggy chestnut Aethonan. Edwin Stocker wore red as well, and brandished a quarterstaff. Her sister Simone, also in red, carried an archery bow, and wore a quiver of arrows across her back. Victoria Hobbes wore a flowing white gown, and a platinum diadem. Estrid Hough, Michael Sturgis, and Gabriella Beckwith played as White's pawns, while Scorpius Malfoy and Henry Longbottom were among Crimson's pawns.

Several pieces were missing. The game was afoot. Victoire watched the harrowing match from the Commentator's Tower. She announced each move. The stadium was empty.

She remembered none of this when she woke. She headed back to the Great Hall for lunch, and listened to Edwin, Ulysses, Nigella, Julian, and Evander discuss the upcoming professional Quidditch season. She found herself most intrigued by Carr's argument that certain off-season trades had put the Westingfield Wyverns in contention for the League Cup. Then she found a shaded spot out in the Clock Tower Courtyard to read the next few chapters of _Reflections_.

Before heading up to the common room to meet up with her dormmates for dinner, Victoire took a detour to the third floor. Some buried unease had been nagging at the underside of her mind all afternoon. Some incoherent sensation she couldn't remember, but couldn't shake.

So she made her way to the infirmary, and passed Constance Thomas, Juliette Frost, and Gabriella Beckwith on their way out. Frost and Thomas paid her little attention as they chatted rapidly to each other, but Beckwith paused when she spotted Victoire. She hesitated a moment, glanced back at her friends, then took a step toward the Ravenclaw. "Thanks, Weasley."

"Of course," Victoire said softly. The Gryffindors were already headed away down the hall. She watched them go, then passed through the outer vestibule and into the sickroom.

Madam Nethersole was tending to a young Ravenclaw boy. Tim West, Victoire recalled. She saw a bottle of Skele-Gro on the table beside his bed. Nethersole said: "Miss Weasley."

Victoire answered with a nod, then looked to the bed where Hobbes lay. The girl looked quite as if she hadn't ingested a concentrated dose of poison hemlock just this morning. Hobbes was not looking at her, however, and gave no sign that she was aware of Victoire's presence.

She returned to the chair she had slept in, turned it toward the patient, and sat. Hobbes said nothing. She looked to her bedside table, to her copy of _the Art of Sacrifice in Chess_. She did not pick up the book, but looked back to her hands, folded in her lap. Victoire leaned forward in her chair, rested her elbows on her knees, and laced her fingers together in front of her.

This was exactly as awkward as she had imagined it would be. She looked down at her own hands several times, considering what to say. Considering, really, if there was anything to say. Each time she looked up, Hobbes was pointedly turned in another direction: into her own lap, or out the window, or up at the ceiling, or over at West when he groaned quietly in his sleep.

A few Hufflepuffs had once tried to give Hobbes and Victoire the nickname of "The Two Vickies." That had lasted all of four months into their first year until Hobbes had made a vulgar comment about the Veela. Victoire couldn't even remember what it was anymore. But they had argued, and then they had thrown hexes at each other, and Hobbes had spent the rest of the week in the infirmary. Victoire had cursed her tongue straight out of her mouth. In French.

She served detention for three months. But she felt she made her point.

Victoire didn't know what she expected to find by coming back here. They sat in silence for ten minutes. Finally, Victoire stood without a word, saw Hobbes looking at her book again. She turned to leave the infirmary, and heard Hobbes say, "they're transferring me to St Mungo's."

Victoire stopped. She didn't turn. "Do they know who put hemlock in your wine?"

Hobbes didn't answer immediately, but she eventually admitted: "they know."

Now Victoire did turn back. Hobbes was looking into her lap again, and Victoire saw the girl picking at the Celtic ring on her index finger. She did not return to her chair, but stood near the foot of the bed. She crossed her arms, and said, "you don't have to tell me anything."

Hobbes shook her head. "Nothing much to tell."

Victoire knew that wasn't true, and she had an idea that Hobbes knew she knew it. But she said nothing, and Hobbes finally turned to look at her. The Gryffindor seemed quite grateful that Victoire wasn't demanding answers. She flashed a weak smile. "You have any tattoos?"

Victoire cracked a grin at the arbitrary question. "Not yet."

"Good on you. Hurts like hell," Hobbes said. "Sets a bad example for your kids."

Victoire nodded, still grinning. "I'll keep that in mind."

"When I have a daughter," Hobbes said, "I'm going to name her Cassiopeia."

Victoire laughed this time at the abrupt shift, and wondered if Professor Burbage's antidote had any curious side effects. But at least Hobbes was talking. "What if you have a son?"

"I won't," Hobbes said with no hesitation. "I'm going to have a daughter."

Victoire laughed again. "Decided on that ahead of time, have you?"

Hobbes smiled wistfully to herself. "There hasn't been a son born into my family in six generation." She shook her head, her smile fading. "That's why me and Cam won't last. He's always talking about the adventures he wants to have with his sons." She sighed, shrugged. "That's just something I can't give him."

"You don't know that for sure, though," Victoire reasoned. "My family was males all the way back until my Aunt Ginny showed up."

Hobbes gave Victoire a conciliatory smirk. "Okay, sure. If I have a son," she said, as if it were as likely as giving birth to a Hippogriff, "I'll call him Atymnius."

Victoire twitched a grin. "How perfectly random."

"Isn't it all?" Hobbes posed. It should have been the sort of offhand comment that meant nothing. But the distant melancholy in the girl's expression as she looked out the windows into the evening sky made Victoire wonder. "Your `mates are probably waiting on you," Hobbes finally said without looking away from the window.

"Probably," Victoire agreed. She made no move to leave.

A faint smile flickered across Hobbes's mouth. "Go ahead. I'll be fine." She reached for her book, and laid it on her lap. "I just need to figure out a couple of things."

Victoire smiled. It was a surprisingly sympathetic gesture. "Don't we all."

Hobbes turned back to her then, almost startled that she was still there. Then she nodded. "Keep an eye on your cousin. Isolde. She's a good kid."

That gave Victoire pause. She never would have guessed that Hobbes knew her cousin. "Sure," she said: "Can do." Hobbes twitched a sad, satisfied smile.

Victoire left the infirmary for Ravenclaw Tower. She didn't know what she'd found by going back there. But the uneasy nagging was gone, and that was enough for Victoire.


End file.
